Women and law of inheritance and ownership of (1)

Submitted to: Submitted by:
Dr. Hemu Rathore Ms. Payal Talesra
Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and technology, Udaipur
The reference material is taken from study material available online

Women and law of Inheritance
 Women's property rights are property and inheritance
rights enjoyed by women.
 Property rights are claims to property that are legally and
socially recognized and enforceable by external legitimized
authority.
 Broadly defined, land rights can be understood as a variety
of legitimate claims to land and the benefits and products
produced on that land.
 These rights can be in the form of actual ownership or
usufruct the rights of use.

…Continued
 Patriarchal Hindu society provided women with
property known as Stridhan.
 Yajnavalkya was the first among the ancient law givers
to interpret Stridhan to a broader aspect to include
property acquired by inheritance and by share or
purchase.
 But other Smritikaras opposed such idea and, finally,
Manusmriti, which is considered as the first and the
main source of Hindu law, dictated that women were
unable to own such property as they are inferior to
men.

…Continued
 The two schools of Hindu law, namely the Mitakhshara and the
Dayabhaga schools, upheld succession laws of Manusmriti and women
remained as secondary owners of the landed property until the
inception of Hindu Women's Right to Property Act (1937).
 By the promulgation of the this Act, the colonial rulers in India in the
eighteenth and nineteenth century took the first step to secure a
married woman's right to property, to a limited extent.
 Property acquired by inheritance or by share or partition was named as
women's estate and wives of Hindu men or the widows of Hindus got
the right to reap the benefit of the property even though they were not
allowed to alienate the property.
 Hindu Women's Right to Property Act (1937) was followed by the
Hindu Code Bill on the eve of independence of India and then finally
by the Hindu Succession Act (1956) whereby the modem law makers
abolished the concept of women's estate and included such property as
stridhan.

Hindu succession laws gave a secured position to
the Hindu wives and widows over the property of
their husband or the property belonging to their
in-laws in case of a predeceased son's widow, the
question of unmarried girls' right to partition of
the dwelling house or the right of residency of the
married daughter in the ancestral house remained
unanswered.

It was nearly fifty years after the inception
of the Hindu Succession Act (1956) that
these questions were solved in the Hindu
Succession (Amendment) Act (2005).
The new Succession Act (2005) gives
women rights over their parental
property.

Women and Land
 The fieldwork suggests that amendments to the
inheritance laws are not sufficient in themselves to change
the patterns of rural land ownership.
 In order for legislative amendments to change patterns of
inheritance, the social and religious norms that impact
inheritance (like dowry practices) must be considered, the
public must be educated as to the purpose of the
amendments.
 Absent a comprehensive education, implementation, and
enforcement programme, the legislative amendments have
no traction in rural lives and are easily ignored.

 In a country where 73.2% of rural women workers are
engaged in agriculture, women own only 12.8% of land
holdings. In Maharashtra, 88.46% of rural women are
employed by agriculture, the highest in the country. In
western Maharashtra’s Nashik district, women own
only 15.6% of the agricultural land holdings,
amounting to 14% of the total cultivated area, as per
the Agricultural Census of 2015.

Land acts as a bargaining tool for
women, said Anita Pagare, a
women’s rights activist based in
Nashik. “With no land to their
name, women are completely at
the mercy of their husbands or
their family.”

Inheritance Law for Muslims
 In Islam, women are entitled the right of inheritance
though generally, Islam allots women half the share of
inheritance available to men.
 The Act prohibits a Muslim man from bequeathing
more than one-third of his property by will, so he
cannot completely disinherit his spouse and female
children.

Women and law of inheritance and ownership of (1)

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