Women's Property Research Articles

Women's property rights equality and entrepreneurial activity

AbstractEntrepreneurship is shaped by institutions. However, past research has largely assumed that everyone has equal property rights even though women often operate under a different property rights structure and have fewer legal rights than men. We fill a gap in the literature by examining how the property rights of women impacts female entrepreneurship in a panel countries using data on property rights from the Economic Freedom of the World dataset and data on entrepreneurship from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. We find that better protection of property rights for women is associated with more the female entrepreneurship relative to male entrepreneurship.

Rights of Widow under inheritance of Property: An Analytical Study

The link between property rights, legal frameworks, and gender equality is examined in the paper "Rights of Widow under Inheritance of Property: In their analytical paper titled “A Study: Humanize the given sentence. Undoubtedly, the paper gives the juridical knowledge base due to the fact it aims at promoting the gender equality, provides support for widows, increases in scholars' discourses and, of course, raises the awareness on this matter. The research examines court interpretations and legislation, customs and traditions, and women's property and income rights, respectively, in the relations with widows' inheritance. The report reveals the importance of an in-depth perusal and the making changes to the regulatory framework to provide all widows with equal protection. Hindu women have better chance to continue their lives with kids. after their husbands' death comparing to widows of people who are Muslim, Christian and Parsi thanks to Hindus becoming much more sympathetic at present days (after the 2005 revision). The analysis comes with recommendations of reformations which include abolition of discriminatory inheritance restrictions and adoption of gender equality standards as the key baselines of the inheritance regime. Promotion of awareness to the community about their inheritance rights and Experts will be of assistance in providing widows with or enhancing their knowledge of inheritance laws. Besides the relation of legal rights and social norms, future research should be on comparative studies, impact assessments, socio-legal studies, and policy assessment in order to reach a more robust result.

Gendering Public and Private International Law: Transversal Legal Histories of the State, Market, and the Family through Women's Private Property Rights

This essay takes up Karen Knop's challenge to reconstruct the oft-made distinction between private and public law by engaging private international law (PrIL) as a “lost side of international law.”1 To do so we interrogate the changing fortunes (literally) of women's private property rights in the long nineteenth century—a period characterized by the divestment and reinstatement of gendered rights in national law—focusing on the Nordics, Europe more broadly, and the Colonial world. Following Knop and other feminist legal scholars, and by engaging with questions of what Mariana Valverde calls “scale,”2 we bring women's property rights in conversation with international law. In doing so, we point to sites of engagement where the politico-economic structures of international law are lived, negotiated, reconfigured, and made real.3 We use scale to frame and inform our analysis bringing attention to how the “small” (micro) economics and politics of everyday life, women's labor, and gendered legal concerns, underpin and are an intrinsic part of the “large-scale” structures of international law. “All scales shifts,” Mariana Valverde notes, meaning that such “processes . . . br[ing] certain phenomena into focus that had previously been blurred or pushed to the background.”4 Recovering matters of women's history and everyday life, which, as Knop has argued are often “hiding in plain sight,” with a focus on women's property rights, brings to the fore the critical relationship between family/household, market, and the state, and the fundamental role international law has played in implementing a specific economic vision through the organization of gendered power relations.

Historical Progression of Women's Property Right in Nepal: Muluki Ain 1910 to Country Civil Code 2074

Historical Progression of Women's Property Right in Nepal: Muluki Ain 1910 to Country Civil Code 2074

Housing and Patrimonial (Property) Violence against Women: The Reproduction of Gender Asset Inequalities in Brazil

AbstractAccessing and retaining adequate housing can be a major challenge for low-income city residents, particularly women trying to escape domestic abuse. Focusing on housing struggles amidst urban poverty, this article explores a specific kind of gender-based violence – violation of women's property rights – recognised by Latin American legal systems as ‘patrimonial violence against women’. Drawing on qualitative research in Brazil, this article shows how women are likely to experience gendered evictions and dispossession, and why patrimonial violence against women remains largely misunderstood and underreported, despite legal progress. The discussion expands current understandings of the interplay between gender, violence (explicit or otherwise) and the reproduction of asset inequalities.

Glimpse of New Woman & Evolution of Feminine Power in Manju Kapur's "Difficult Daughters"

The purpose of this paper is to study the evolution of feminist power and the emergence of new woman in the novel "Difficult Daughter's". Manju Kapur is an eminent novelist who can be put in the category of those women writers who brought a remarkable transformation in the representation of women characters. As a woman she is concerned with the problems of Indian woman in the patriarchal family and deals with various feminist Issues as gender equality, freedom from discrimination,right to education, marriage, abortion, autonomy, women's property rights, oppression etc. In the novel *Difficult Daughter's* Virmati is a typical daughter to her mother as she opposes the patriarchal norms for self identity. Women are discriminated and devoid of their basic rights in the patriarchal society Her female protagonists are educated women with independent thinking who follow their own ideology. Her novels present the position of women and their struggle in the contemporary Indian society .As a woman, she successfully highlights the feminist struggle against patriarchy, exploitation. Her female characters reveal feminist power and represent the new women who are thinking, questioning and rational beings and raise a voice for basic rights, self identity and Survival.

Coercion or Consent? Women, Property and Legal Authority in Early Modern Scotland

During the early modern period women's ownership of property was significantly constrained by the marital relationship. Scots law stipulated that much of a woman's property passed to her husband on marriage and that her ability to sell, control or dispose of much property without her husband's consent was severely restricted. Yet, despite such strict legal rules, jurists were aware that a married woman could be placed in a difficult position if her husband abused his position, with legal procedures introduced to mitigate a husband's extensive property powers. As a result, a husband could not sell land his wife brought to the marriage, or any land they held jointly, without her consent, indicated by her signature or mark on the deed and her declaration in a private examination that she acted under her own free will and not under coercion or pressure from her husband. This article interrogates the legal requirement of the wife's consent in Scots law from two conflicting positions: first, as a restraint on the husband's administrative powers in that she was entitled to openly challenge a mortgage or sale; and second, as an endorsement of the husband's superior position in that she was most likely unable to publicly challenge her husband's patriarchal authority during his lifetime. In doing so, it argues that women's legal authority in early modern Scotland was complex and, at times, contradictory, and that this legal ambiguity entitled the courts to make decisions that routinely looked beyond fixed rules when women's property rights and patriarchal rules overlapped.

Mergers and Legal Fictions: Coverture and Intermarried Women in India

AbstractWithin India's system of plural personal laws, the rights of women in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance are solely based on their natal communal identity. While we see many examples of women appealing to courts to secure or improve their rights vis-à-vis personal laws, marriage outside the community has often occluded these rights completely. Marital property, inheritance, and even access to sacred space are in a gray zone of differentiated rights between natal and marital community customs. One intermarried woman, Goolrukh Gupta, sued the trust that managed the town's sacred space in the High Court to confirm her rights to enter sacred space. The Court ruled that she was removed from her natal community even though she had married under the Special Marriage Act of 1954, as she had “merged personality with her husband.” While British women's property was held under coverture through the nineteenth century, these laws were never transferred over to the Indian colony. Through the legal appeals of intermarried women, this article explores the shifting and unstable rights of intermarried women in India.

INHERITANCE RIGHTS OF WOMEN – THE NORTH INDIAN SCENARIO

Indian women have had to fight for their property rights for a long time, just like women in other countries. Indian women's property rights are not fair or equal, but they have come a long way in the last 100 years. Indian women still have less property rights than men, both in terms of the amount and the quality of those rights.
 When it involves property rights, Indian women have a lot of different ideas. India is home to a lot of various religions, and each one has its own rules about how to live. The right to own something is one of these aspects. Even among the different religions, there are subsets and local rules and customs that have their own property rights. A code of property rights was written down for Hindus, Sikhs, Monks, and Jains in 1956. Christians live by a different set of rules, and neither Shias nor Sunnis have put their property rights in writing. Also, tribal women from different faiths and states still adhere to the laws and traditions of their tribal groups when it did come to their property rights. The Indian Constitution states that both the central government as well as the state governments have the authority to pass legislation about succession, which makes things even more complicated. This means so each state can make its own rules about property, and some have done so.

Utah's Women Homesteaders

Utah's Women Homesteaders

How gender-based cultural practices violate women's property rights and inhibit property ownership: A South African perspective

This article discusses the effect of gender-based cultural practices on women's property rights in South Africa and how this impacts on women's ability to own property – particularly land. The cultural practices discussed include those relating to customary marriages such as payment of brideprice and polygamy. They also include the practices of levirate marriages and male premogeniture. These practices are linked to the unequal position of women in society, and they do not only prohibit women's access to property ownership but they also infringe their constitutional rights. To that end, the constitutional protection of the right to equality in relation to property rights is discussed and suggestions are made on how the Constitution can be used to protect women's property rights. The role of the courts in protecting women's property rights is particularly highlighted. Specific reference is made to the significance of section 39 of the Constitution which requires a court to interpret the Bill of Rights in a way that promotes “the values that underlie an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom” and obliges the courts to consider international law when interpreting the Bill of Rights. Indeed the article concludes that denying women's rights to property under the guise of culture is discriminatory and offends against fundamental and intrinsic human rights. It is proposed that courts should be encouraged to draw inference from international law as mandated by section 39 of the Constitution as this will, in all likelihood, see more women enjoying independent rights in property.

Falling Stories: Cinematic Naturalism and Disability in Frank Norris’ and Stephen Crane's City Sketches

Falling Stories: Cinematic Naturalism and Disability in Frank Norris’ and Stephen Crane's City Sketches

Women's Property Rights Under Traditional Hindu Law and the Hindu Succession Act, 1956: A Few Observations

Women's Property Rights Under Traditional Hindu Law and the Hindu Succession Act, 1956: A Few Observations

A Fool’s Errand? Legal Legacies of Reconstruction in Two Southern States

This Article examines several legal aspects of Reconstruction. It first looks at how the Texas and North Carolina supreme courts helped mediate the transition from a pre-war to a post-war society. Were the courts composed of unconditional Unionists, Conservatives, or a mix? Did they try to help the people of their states accept slav- ery's demise or did they aggravate the sting of defeat? A closely related issue is how Reconstruction lawmakers adjusted the legal rights of blacks following the abolition of slavery. Did they leave a permanent imprint on civil rights law or did they confirm Tourgee's judgment that Reconstruction was ultimately a "fool's errand"?' The Article next examines state constitutional history, which is also necessary for a full understanding of Reconstruction's legal legacy. North Carolina's Reconstruction constitution encompassed not only racial reforms but also a variety of attempts to catch up with social and economic reforms enacted in other parts of the nation before the war. Texas's Reconstruction constitution did the same, albeit to a lesser extent, because Texas had already adopted some of the social and economic reforms in question before the war. Texas enacted a new constitution at the end of Reconstruction and North Carolina added extensive amendments to its constitution at the end of Reconstruction, but both states stopped far short of eradicating all Reconstruction-era constitutional reforms. The Article next examines the evolution of economic law in Texas and North Carolina during the Reconstruction era. Reconstruction had profound economic as well as political consequences for the South. A new agricultural labor system had to be developed to replace slavery. Lawmakers had to arrange an orderly transition from the Confederate financial system back to the federal system and respond to problems arising out of the widespread poverty and debt created by the war. By 1865, the Industrial Revolution was well underway in the North, and the Southern states had to decide whether to shape their legal systems to follow suit or to preserve their rural, agricultural pre-war character. Lastly, the Article examines changes in married women's property rights law during Reconstruction. Many Southern women gained an "experience of self-sufficiency during the war [that] opened the door a crack to the 'strong-minded' women." This fact, together with a desire to alleviate post-war economic distress by protecting family assets from creditors, led several ex-Confederate states, including North Carolina, to expand married women's property rights during Reconstruction. Other Confederate states, including Texas, had been leaders in the married women's property rights movement before the war and therefore experienced less change in this area during Reconstruction.

EMPOWERING WOMEN IN MATRIMONIAL PROPERTY: A CASE STUDY IN SELANGOR

The passage of time and era has greatly changed the role of women in the family institution. In Malaysia, women's rights are empowered in matrimonial property as recognized by the Islamic Family Law in every state including the State of Selangor where it can be claimed by reason of divorce, polygamy or death. However, cases of matrimonial property claims are confusing to women due to several problematic factors such as lack of information, lack of awareness and lack of knowledge of their procedures and rights, thus causing them to feel persecuted by the implementation of this law. The matrimonial property claim is important because it can prove and guarantee the ownership of a woman's property during the marriage period. The purpose of this research is first, to understand women's rights in matrimonial property according to sharia, second to identify women's issues and problems in matrimonial property claims and the third objective is to analyse women's awareness of matrimonial property. This research method is based on the distribution of questionnaires through the Google Form link that has been shared and answered by women respondents in Selangor according to the level of likert scale. The findings of the data are described in a descriptive analysis of their level of awareness, knowledge and understanding in matrimonial property claims. The results of the study on the empowerment of women in matrimonial property in Selangor have shown achievements at a positive level due to good background factors and high understanding from them.

Intergenerational reforms in women’s right to inheritance in India

The evolution after the Hindu Code Bill, women's property ownership in India has improved. Women's position in old custom and their evolution in modern law from the colonial period to the Hindu Code Bill are the study's main focus areas. In ancient legal codes, such as Dharmashastras, Manusmriti, and Arthashastra, women were denied property rights and she always is dependent on their father, husband, or son. As per our constitution, every human being has the right to equitable treatment. Equal property rights for men and women are important for reducing the gender gap, to empower women in order to promote social and economic development and to ensure gender and social justice within the framework of Personal Laws and inform women about the areas of legislation that are most likely to affect and enhance their lives. So the focus of the article is on women's inheritance rights in old Indian laws and their development in modern laws with help of international conventions. As the status of women in India improves economically and socially, there is a need for more development and a single or uniform property rights for every sect of Indian females.

Women's Legal Rights and Gender Gaps in Property Ownership in Developing Countries

AbstractWomen's property ownership matters for their well‐being and agency, broader economic prosperity, and children's development. However, until recently, a lack of data has constrained further exploration of gender differences in property ownership in the developing world. Using data from 41 developing countries, this paper contributes to the literature by investigating gender gaps in the incidence of property ownership among couples and the factors associated with these gaps, focusing on the role of legal systems. We find that in almost all countries, husbands are more likely to own property than wives. Across countries in our sample, husbands are, on average, 2.7 times more like than wives to own property alone and 1.4 times more likely to own property alone or jointly. Within countries, gender gaps in the incidence of property ownership are most pronounced for disadvantaged groups, that is, the rural population and the poorest quintile. These gender gaps reflect a variety of factors, including discriminatory laws with respect to inheritance, property ownership, marital regimes, and laws that protect from workplace discrimination. Countries with more gender egalitarian legal regimes have higher levels of property ownership by married women, especially housing, suggesting that legal reforms are a potential mechanism to increase women's property ownership.

The Effects of Property Rights Violations on Economic Independence of Widows in Rarieda Sub-County

The right of women to possess, enjoy and dispose of their property is a universal human right recognized by international human rights treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among many other regional and national instruments. Even with the enactment of laws protecting women's property rights, widows' deprivation has continued unabated. Most widows live in conditions out of the need to conform to social norms demands and meet the most basic of their needs and that of their children. The study determined a) factors influencing property rights violations b) effects of property rights on the economic independence of widows. This study employed a cross-sectional descriptive research design, and semi-structured and unstructured questionnaires were used to collect data. This design helped collect accurate data on property rights violations faced by the study population and how they influenced their economic independence. The study population consisted of widows in Rarieda Sub County. Systematic random sampling technique was used to obtain the 230 respondents to whom questionnaires were administered to obtain quantitative and qualitative data. The study found that major causes of these violations included customs and traditions, poverty, lack of knowledge of laws governing property ownership, and lack of proper enforcement of these laws by the government. 76.5% (176) of the widows were found to have not gained any property post losing their husbands. These widows indicated to have relied on aid from the government, NGOs, and willing family members to make ends meet. The study findings showed clearly that most widows suffer property rights violations in Rarieda sub-county, Siaya County. This, in turn, affects their economic independence. Cultural norms and traditions were found to be among the major factors which influence property rights violations among widows. Traditions do not allow women to inherit their father's or father-in-law's property; hence they are always left at the mercy of the husband's family. The study recommends that the community be encouraged to rethink their customary laws and align this to the provisions of various statutes/laws that grant women the right to inherit property. Keywords: Economic Independence, Property Rights, Widow, Inheritance

Peripartum Investigation of Red Blood Cell Properties in Women Diagnosed with Early-Onset Preeclampsia.

We investigated peripartum maternal red blood cell (RBC) properties in early-onset preeclampsia (PE). Repeated blood samples were taken prospectively for hemorheological measurements at PE diagnosis (n = 13) or during 26–34 weeks of gestation in healthy pregnancies (n = 24), then at delivery, and 72 h postpartum. RBC aggregation was characterized by M index (infrared light transmission between the aggregated RBCs in stasis) and aggregation index (AI—laser backscattering from the RBC aggregates). We observed significantly elevated RBC aggregation (M index = 9.8 vs. 8.5; AI = 72.9% vs. 67.5%; p < 0.001) and reduced RBC deformability in PE (p < 0.05). A positive linear relationship was observed between AI and gestational age at birth in PE by regression analysis (R2 = 0.554; p = 0.006). ROC analysis of AI showed an AUC of 0.84 (0.68–0.99) (p = 0.001) for PE and indicated a cutoff of 69.4% (sensitivity = 83.3%; specificity = 62.5%), while M values showed an AUC of 0.75 (0.58–0.92) (p = 0.019) and indicated a cutoff of 8.39 (sensitivity = 90.9% and specificity = 50%). The predicted probabilities from the combination of AI and M variables showed increased AUC = 0.90 (0.79–1.00) (p < 0.001). Our results established impaired microcirculation in early-onset PE manifesting as deteriorated maternal RBC properties. The longer the pathologic pregnancy persists, the more pronounced the maternal erythrocyte aggregation. AI and M index could help in the prognostication of early-onset PE, but further investigations are warranted to confirm the prognostic role before the onset of symptoms.

CONCEPT OF DOWRY IN HINDU MARRIAGE SYSTEM: A STUDY

To demand Stridhana, formerly a woman's property, is now a boy's right. Her father freely gave it to her. It is part of a prenuptial agreement between two families, and even after the wedding, there is an expectation of more. Insufficient dowry has sparked protests due to the brutality of the dowry process and the deaths of females. Women's stridhan was a fundamental right. While the aristocracy had a lot of money, the impoverished women had to labour as maids or in handicrafts, agriculture and basket-making to support their families. The Manusmriti, a granth created by many between 200 BC and AD 200 and committed to writing in the twelfth century AD, had a significant impact on the position of Hindu women. According to the author, 'Brahma divided his body into two pieces, one for man and one for woman.' In other words, she was born equal. Where women are revered, there are gods, and where they are degraded, there is no hope. Manu, like the Jatakas, sees women as tempting, who blame males, and who should be avoided in isolation, much like in the Jatakas. No one expects males to gaze at women when they decorate themselves, dress, or rest. The daughters kid was not allowed to participate in rituals including mantras from infancy through puberty. Here, there is no mention of the guru's ashram's Brahmacharya time or the upnayana being done on girls.