The Hindu Succession act: One Law, Plural Identities

Empowering women? Inheritance rights, female education and dowry payments in India

“…This implies that the likelihood of inheritance for daughters did not increase even after the reform was passed, and that they continued to be disinherited from what was their rightful share in ancestral property. This is consistent with existing evidence obtained from ethnographic and mixed qualitative-quantitative studies conducted in the various reforming states, which find that the amendment to HSA 1956 had no impact on the likelihood of inheritance by daughters (Bates, 2004;Brown et al, 2002;Brule, 2012). This result is robust to the inclusion of household controls (Column 2) as well as state-specific linear trends (Column 3).…”

“…This is consistent with existing evidence from ethnographic and mixed qualitative-quantitative studies in the reforming states described in Bates (2004), Brown et al (2002) and Brule (2012), which document that the progressive legislative amendments to the HSA 1956 failed to have any impact on women's inheritance in these states in practice.…”

“…Using variation in the timing of grandfather's death, I find no significant impact on the likelihood of inheritance for women post reform. Indeed, this is consistent with the existing evidence from a number of the ethnographic and mixed qualitative-quantitative studies on this topic (Bates, 2004;Brown et al, 2002;Brule, 2012) that also document the widespread ineffectiveness of the reform with regard to women's inheritance. In addition, when controls for father's year of death are added, the positive impact of Goyal et al (2013), on female inheritance disappears.…”

Preventing More “Missing Girls”: A Review of Policies to Tackle Son Preference

“…While the increase in educational investments in daughters is encouraging, Roy's (2015) study also indicates how differences in the treatment of boys and girls persisted despite legislative reform. The results of this analysis pertaining to inheritance are broadly supported by ethnographic work by Bates (2004), 14 and mixed methods work by Brown et al (2002). 15 The disparity between Deininger et al's (2013) and Roy's (2015) results can be explained by differences in the empirical strategy used.…”

“…13 Evidence suggests that the inheritance law reform had positive impacts on women's bargaining power within the household (Mookerjee 2017) and on women's labor participation rates in high skilled jobs (Heath & Tan 2016). 14 Bates (2004) draws on intensive field research in Bheema, a village in the Pune district, in Maharashtra state. She finds that women in the village prefer to not assert their inheritance rights out of fear of disrupting their social networks.…”