7. How and in what ways does women’s access to landownership contribute to the gender gap in economic well-being, social status and empowerment? Please provide examples.

1.    Introduction

In this modern age of globalization and ‘supposed’ global prosperity, gender gap continues to persist globally. While there are many factors, such as- wage employment, independent income (Anderson and Eshweran, 2009; Ahmed and Jalil, 2018), education (Robeyns, 2003) that affect gender gap, one of the critical factor is ownership and control of property (Agarwal, 1994). According to Agarwal (1994:1455), “the gender gap in the ownership and control of property is the single most critical contributor to the gender gap in economic well- being, social status, and empowerment”.

Most of the redistributive policies of the state led economic development (1910-1970) prescribed land reform policies that were gender blind, leading to creation of significant gender gap in women’s ownership and control of land and property, i.e. they were not gender neutral in practice (Razavi, 2009). Such practices perpetuated during the neo-liberal restructuring, where state’s role was marginalized and market based solutions were promoted, primarily because the reforms did not take into account the deep rooted patriarchy that manifested itself in the prevailing institutions, social norms and social relations, resulting in systematic negative bias towards and exclusion of women in land ownership (Deere and Leon, 2001). Research based on cross country analysis in the Sub Saharan Africa showed that market based land reform led to further weakening of women’s land ownership (Razavi, 2009).

The present paper, drawing on various literature by feminist economists and others, discusses the various transmission mechanisms through which women’s access to land ownership, inferring both legal right and control in line with Agarwal’s (1994) argument, affect gender gap in the areas of economic well-being, social status and empowerment.  It must be noted that, there are overlaps and interconnectedness among the concepts of economic well-being, social status and empowerment. The paper is divided into the following 4 sections, the first 3 sections illustrate with specific country examples on how and through what mechanisms access to land ownership affects the aforesaid 3 areas respectively.

The final 2 sections will critique and summarizes the concepts discussed in the paper.