Record Item Language: English

Women who own land may still lack control over it. Despite claims that women enjoy high status in Kerala, economic, social, and cultural factors interact to reinforce gender differences in ownership, control over, and access to critical agricultural resources, including land.

Abstract: This paper focuses on a much neglected issue: the links between gender inequities and command over property. It outlines why in rural South Asia, where arable land is the most important form of property, any significant improvement in women’s economic and social situation is crucially tied to their having independent land rights. Better employment opportunities can complement but not substitute for land. But despite progressive legislation few South Asian women own land; even fewer effectively control any. Why? A complex range of factors — social, administrative, and ideological — are found to underlie the persistent gap between women’s legal […]

Abstract: The question of women’s land rights has a relatively young history in India. This paper briefly traces that history before examining why gendering the land question remains critical, and what the new possibilities are for enhancing women’s land access. Potentially, women can obtain land through the State, the family and the market. The paper explores the prospects and constraints linked to each, arguing that access through the family and the market deserve particular attention, since most arable land in India is privatized. On market access, the paper makes several departures from existing discussions by focusing on the advantages, especially […]

“Although the Constitution promises no discrimination on the basis of sex as a fundamental right, most inheritance and ceiling provisions relating to one of the most important economic resources in the country continue to be highly gender discriminatory; and the Ninth Schedule leruls itself to their perpetuation. Surprisingly, these aspects, which impinge directly and crucially on women’s legal and economic status, have received little attention so far from either researchers or activists. This paper attempts to fill some of this gap.”

“Asset ownership and control rights are preferable to numerous policy alternatives for women’s empowerment. This paper is an attempt at drawing attention to the complex inter-relationship between women agricultural producers and their lack of rights to land and related factors of production. It further explores implications of women’s marginal rights to land for their economic security and agricultural productivity.”

“In the discussions concerning progress on gender equality, the status of women’s asset ownership is a critical missing indicator. Assets are a product of accumulated income, reflecting long-term well-being, and thus are important for determining livelihood choices. While there is general agreement that few women own key assets, there is no systematic sex-disaggregated asset data to measure or monitor. Households are the unit of analysis in standard surveys, where the only feasible gender analysis is by sex of the household head. Using data from a state-representative survey conducted in 2010-11, this paper presents estimates of the gender asset and wealth […]

“This paper seeks to examine the issue of land rights, and its links with household food security as well as gender equality and questions some of the assumptions being made therein. After a brief analysis of shifts in policy discourse and practice, both nationally and internationally, in terms of agricultural production and land management as vital for food security, it seeks to analyse the implications of some of these measures on gender relations. Does the increasing attention to women reflect growing gender equality, or does it lead to an enhancement of the work burden and responsibilities, without much change in […]

Summary: If development means the expansion of human capabilities, then freedom from domestic violence should be an integral part of any exercise for evaluating developmental progress. This paper focuses on a hitherto unexplored factor underlying women’s risk of marital violence, namely, women’s property status. Many studies have examined the scale and correlates of marital violence, but neglected this dimension. Based on a household survey in Kerala (India), the authors assess the prevalence and correlates of both physical and psychological violence—long term and current. Women owning immovable property (land or a house) are found to face a significantly lower risk of […]