Does education enable underprivileged women to achieve real equality in property rights? A case study of inheritance rights of women in Turkey

Abstract

Laws promoting gender equality often fail to improve women's experiences. This failure is particularly acute for the experiences of socio-economically marginalized women. Understanding why legislated equality as prescribed in laws often does not lead to the equality of outcomes is an ongoing puzzle in the studies of gender and politics. Utilizing an intersectional approach, this paper argues that education can serve as a constitutive element for marginalized women to enable legislated equality as prescribed in laws to lead to real equality, the equality of outcomes. This article empirically investigates the influence of education by utilizing a unique dataset compiled by an internationally recognized NGO, Kamer, on a representative data of the marginalized women in the eastern city of Diyarbakır in Turkey. The study indicates that a higher level of education is significantly and positively associated with the likelihood of claiming to obtain equal inheritance. Therefore, mere legislation of gender-progressive laws is not sufficient to improve the experiences of women, and achieving gender equality may require improving the educational status of women. The current study also outlines the gains from intersectional research in studying marginalized women's experiences and advocates for the employment of an intersectional approach in more empirical studies.