Women’s empowerment is about land ownership

Source: This post is created based on the article “Women’s empowerment is about land ownership”, published in Live Mint on 19^th August 2022.

Syllabus: GS Paper 2 – Social Issues – Women and related issues

Context: Despite legislative efforts to fix a sharp gender imbalance in inheritance, very few Indian women have any legal title to property.

Prime Minister, in his recent Independence Day speech, asked for an attitudinal shift across the country in favor of ‘Nari Shakti’—or women’s power. He further said, “Respect for women is an important pillar for India’s growth.”

However, the economist Hernando de Soto, in The Mystery of Capital said, legal ownership of land can make all the difference between poverty and the ability to escape it. Thus, women’s empowerment also requires control over assets, other than income and job opportunities. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals also require countries to track the status of women’s land rights.

What do the survey findings say about women’s empowerment?

In, India, especially in rural areas, women’s empowerment is constrained by weak command over the farmland they till. Following are the findings of the 5^th round of the National Family Health Survey 2020-21:

1. A drop has been reported in the country’s women aged 15-49 saying they owned a house or land (either solely or jointly) to less than a quarter from over a third back in 2015-16.
2. About 98 million women were found to be engaged in agriculture and allied activities, with most working as labor rather than cultivators.
3. Less than 13% of Indian farmland is under female ownership.

What are the laws regulating inheritance in India?

The Hindu Succession Act of 1956 laid down equal distribution of property among all inheritors, irrespective of gender, as the broad majority norm.

This law was amended in 2005 to specifically grant sons and daughters equal rights to joint-family property.

Among Muslims, an age-old provision often prevails by which sons get twice the share (on an avowal to provide for their sisters if need be).

In case of disputes over ancestral estates,

What are the reasons behind women lacking land ownership?    

Almost a third of rural households are estimated to be headed by women. It is because of the patriarchal scenario, in which land-owning men migrate to cities, leaving their farms for womenfolk to work on.

Land possession remains largely dependent on inheritance and property rights for women.

In the cases involving disputes on ancestral estates, women were cheated of their due, by heavy family pressure.