Women and land ownership : A case study of sundabans in west bengal

Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to look into the discrimination of women based on gender in accomplishing property rights with special reference to Sundarbans in West Bengal. The study highlights the fact that the concept and policies of landownership, which India inherited from the colonial rule, remain significantly gender blind due to the subordinate position Indian modernity/nation offered to women. The legal and policy interventions of late to bring gender justice in landownership and inheritance have achieved little success due to entrenched patrifocal social norms. Undertaken with a considered presumption that landownership and right of inheritance is crucial in achieving gender equality and gaining self and social respect for women, the study brings out socio-economic implications of land ownership to rural women in Sundarbans. It is found that landownership by women can make significant changes in their own lives and that of the family, materially and socially, though social, familial, administrative and economic obstacles blocks them in retrieving their share in the paternal property and claiming their husband's property. The women has to fight an embedded rural patriarchal commonsense in order to claim, own and manage landed property.