ABSTRACT

Measuring gender inequality in land ownership is essential for assessing progress in women’s economic empowerment, tracing the impact of progressive laws on actual practice, and monitoring SDG 5 on gender equality. To effectively assess inter-gender (male-female) gaps in land ownership, however, requires multiple measures. We also need to know which women are more likely to own land by tracing intra-gender differences. To date, no study on India has provided a full range of measures on inter-gender inequality in land ownership or focused on intra-gender variations. This paper uses unique longitudinal data to measure inter-gender gaps in agricultural land ownership through multiple indicators, and changes over 2009–2014 across nine states. It also analyses intra-gender gaps, and identifies the factors–individual, household and regional–affecting a woman’s likelihood of owning land. Despite significant advancement towards equality in inheritance laws, women are found to constitute barely 14% of landowners owning 11% of agricultural land in rural landowning households, averaged across states. Moreover, women are significantly more likely to inherit land as widows than as daughters, highlighting the divergence between the legal strengthening of daughters’ rights and the social legitimacy that widows’ claims continue to enjoy over daughters’ claims.

摘要

衡量土地所有权方面的性别不平等对于评估妇女经济赋权的进展、追踪进步法律对实际实践的影响以及监测关于性别平等的可持续发展目标 5 至关重要。然而，要有效评估土地所有权方面的性别间（男性-女性）差距，需要采取多种措施。我们还需要通过追踪性别差异来了解哪些女性更有可能拥有土地。迄今为止，没有任何关于印度的研究就土地所有权方面的性别间不平等提供了全面的措施，也没有侧重于性别内部差异。本文使用独特的纵向数据，通过多个指标衡量农业土地所有权的性别差距，以及 2009-2014 年九个州的变化。它还分析了性别差距，并确定了因素——个人、家庭和地区——影响妇女拥有土地的可能性。尽管在继承法方面取得了重大进展，但在各州平均拥有 11% 农业土地的农村土地所有者中，妇女仅占土地所有者的 14%。此外，妇女作为寡妇比作为女儿继承土地的可能性要大得多，这突显了在法律上加强女儿权利与寡妇要求继续享有优于女儿要求的社会合法性之间的分歧。