|**Geography**||**2019**–**20**|||**2015**–**16**||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||**Urban**|**Rural**|**Total**|**Urban**|**Rural**|**Total**|
|Delhi(NCT)|22.6|27.4|22.7|34.7|*|34.9|
|INDIA|38.3|45.7|43.3|35.2|40.1|38.4|

_*_ Percentage not shown; based on fewer than 25 unweighted cases.

_Source:_ National Family Health Survey 2015–16 and 2019–20, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

# 1.3 Gender and property rights in India

Throughout history, numerous cultural, legal, political, and social factors have systematically impeded or barred females from accessing property rights, including both land and physical property. The economic literature offers more thematic studies investigating issues related to gender bias in land ownership than studies focusing on gender issues relating to physical property ownership (houses and commercial buildings). On the other hand, multiple studies refer to both land and property ownership interchangeably. This study considers both subjects in parallel, and review of the findings highlights core issues associated with gender bias. The central focus of the study is ownership of immovable property in urban areas, however, and not (rural) land.

Gender inequality in access to property existed in India to a large extent due to discriminatory inheritance and marital laws and practices. This was the case before India enacted the 2005 Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act (HSAA), which removed gender discriminatory provisions from the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. Under the amendment, the daughter of a coparcener<sup>7</sup> becomes by birth a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as the son. The daughter now has the same rights as a son in all types of property (including ancestral property of the Hindu Undivided Family). The HSAA also repealed Section 23 of the Hindu Succession Act, which disentitled a female heir from asking for partition in respect of a dwelling house, wholly occupied by a joint family, until the male heirs choose to divide their respective shares. Section 24 of the Act, which denied the rights of a widow to inherit her husband’s property upon her remarriage, has also been repealed, and this applies to all states in India.<sup>8</sup> The 2005 Act was a significant move toward gender equality, since property rights were previously biased against women in India. Several recent studies found, that over time, the HSAA did contribute to an increase in the likelihood that women would inherit land or other types of property. Research by Deininger has found that the HSAA considerably increased daughters' likelihood of inheriting land and improved the educational attainment of daughters (Deininger, Goyal, and Nagarajan 2013). However, the existing literature on women’s inheritance rights in India points out that significant gender bias persists even after the reform. For example, Agarwal, Anthwal, and Mahesh (2020) find some divergence between legal reforms and traditional social norms that result in a higher likelihood that a widow will inherit land or property over daughters. The evidence suggests two possible reasons for the remaining gender bias. As reported by Mohan (2017), the first reason is that “personal religious law governs ownership of land,

> 7. A coparcener is a person who shares equally with others in the inheritance of an undivided estate or in the rights to that estate.

> 8. <mark>Government of India (2015), “National Review on Beijing +20.”</mark>

5