{"id":200692,"date":"2022-08-19T17:40:42","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T12:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=200692"},"modified":"2022-08-19T17:42:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T12:12:06","slug":"womens-empowerment-is-about-land-ownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/womens-empowerment-is-about-land-ownership\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s empowerment is about land ownership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> This post is created based on the article <strong>\u201cWomen<\/strong><strong>\u2019s empowerment is about land ownership\u201d,<\/strong> published in <strong>Live Mint <\/strong>on <strong>19<sup>th<\/sup> August 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus<\/strong>: GS Paper 2 \u2013 Social Issues \u2013 Women and related issues<\/p>\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong> Despite legislative efforts to fix a sharp gender imbalance in inheritance, very few Indian women have any legal title to property.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister, in his recent Independence Day speech, asked for an attitudinal shift across the country in <strong>favor of \u2018Nari Shakti\u2019\u2014or women\u2019s power<\/strong>. He further said, \u201cRespect for women is an important pillar for India\u2019s growth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, the economist Hernando de Soto, in\u00a0<em>The Mystery of Capital <\/em>said, legal ownership of land can make all the difference between poverty and the ability to escape it. Thus, women&#8217;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\u2019s land rights.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What do the survey findings say about women&#8217;s empowerment?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>In, India, especially in rural areas, women&#8217;s empowerment is constrained by weak command over the farmland they till. Following are the findings of the 5<sup>th<\/sup> round of the National Family Health Survey 2020-21:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>A drop has been reported in the country\u2019s 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.<\/li>\n<li>About 98 million women were found to be engaged in agriculture and allied activities, with most working as labor rather than cultivators.<\/li>\n<li>Less than 13% of Indian farmland is under female ownership.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h5><strong>What are the laws regulating inheritance in India?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><strong>The Hindu Succession Act of 1956<\/strong> laid down equal distribution of property among all inheritors, irrespective of gender, as the broad majority norm.<\/p>\n<p>This law was amended in 2005 to specifically grant sons and daughters equal rights to joint-family property.<\/p>\n<p>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).<\/p>\n<p>In case of disputes over\u00a0ancestral estates,<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What are the reasons behind women lacking land ownership?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Land possession remains largely dependent on inheritance and property rights for women.<\/p>\n<p>In the cases involving disputes on ancestral estates, women were cheated of their due, by heavy family pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: This post is created based on the article \u201cWomen\u2019s empowerment is about land ownership\u201d, published in Live Mint on 19th August 2022. Syllabus: GS Paper 2 \u2013 Social Issues \u2013 Women and related issues Context: Despite legislative efforts to fix a sharp gender imbalance in inheritance, very few Indian women have any legal title&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/womens-empowerment-is-about-land-ownership\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Women\u2019s empowerment is about land ownership<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10501],"class_list":["post-200692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-live-mint","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}