Gender Perspectives On Property And Inheritance

Extrait de la couverture : "Legal and customary arrangements and practices govern women's rights and access to resources, such as land and housing. This book highkights women's unequal position in formal and customary laws and practices and the way in which gender relations affect women's and men's access to property through inheritance. The introduction examines how gender relations defiine ownership and control of property and the attention that the issue of gender equality has received in the development agenda. Five reviews from Latin America, Ivory Coast, South Africa, the Middle East and India focus on the disjuncture between law and practice in terms of women's property and land rights, inheritance, access to resources, marriage and employement. These contributions also reflect on the importance of women's participation in decison-making forums and the need for women's political organization and mobilization in order to redress gender imbalances in land and inheritance rights."

This title features contributions from the South addressing gender equality and inheritance rights at the household level. Disparities between customary law, family law, and the official legal system are discussed with regard to property rights, marriage, land rights and inheritance. Each article covers the current situation and experiences of violation of women's personal rights and provides policy tools to bring about improvement. Material from across the developing world is included in the annotated bibliography and the resources section. Published in association with KIT Publishers.

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On their list of 17 Sustainable Development Goals for all nations, the United Nations uses #5 “to achieve equality and empower all women and girls”. One of the nine targets under goal 5 is ‘gender equality in the ownership of productive assets, especially land, by 2030”. When it comes to achieving gender equality in developing countries like Bangladesh, women and men’s equal access to property is generally seen as a goal that is universally desirable. But what if this were a wholly inappropriate metric for measuring and achieving gender equality by 2030 across diverse situations in the developing world—and Bangladesh in particular? This is exactly the case author and development expert Mohammad Jabbar makes in this impressive, thoroughly researched work of non-fiction. Among other acute insights, he argues SDG target on gender equality is asset ownership by 2030 may be ill-suited for the rural Bangladeshi context because of . . . • The inappropriate use of the concept of “household” over that of “family” as a survey unit for measuring its attainment • The potential for the creation of superfluous junk statistics for monitoring progress that measure ownership and use rights not indicative of actual gender (in)equality • The general lack of understanding it displays of local laws, customs and norms of gender, inheritance, and other vital concepts related to asset ownership. Thoughtful in its conception and precise in its execution, this carefully argued piece of academic research is sure to make a useful—even necessary—addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in development and gender equality, whether they be academics, policymakers, researchers, students, or laypeople.

This is the first major study of gender and property in South Asia. In a pioneering and comprehensive analysis Bina Agarwal argues that the single most important economic factor affecting women's situation is the gender gap in command over property. In rural South Asia, the most significant form of property is arable land, a critical determinant of economic well-being, social status, and empowerment. But few women own land; fewer control it. Drawing on a vast range of interdisciplinary sources and her own field research, and tracing regional variations across five countries, the author investigates the complex barriers to women's land ownership and control, and how they might be overcome. The book makes significant and original contributions to theory and policy concerning land reforms, 'bargaining' and gender relations, women's status, and the nature of resistance.

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