of their brothers, reinforced by social stigma, seclusion practices, and other sanctions. Given the lack of alternatives, women tend to be dependent on their brothers for economic and social support in the event of widowhood or marital breakup. As a result, women tend to internalize the social norms which lead them to forfeit their legal rights in land even without overt pressure from their relatives. These social obstacles to the exercise of legal rights by women are strongest in North India (e.g. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh) and weakest in South India. Even where women do enjoy ownership rights in name, they may not exercise effective control over land, being unable, for example, to determine how the land should be used, or to lease, mortgage or dispose of the land or products from it.

Why is it important that women should have independent land rights? The case in favor rests on three types of argument: welfare, efficiency, and equality or empowerment (Agarwal 1994a). On welfare grounds, gender-based inequities in well-being are well documented (e.g. Dreze and Gazdar 1996 for Uttar Pradesh). Women's lack of control over independent sources of income has implications not just for their own well-being, but also for their children's well-being, since it is known that child nutritional status is more closely related to women's than men's income. To the extent that women's income is land-based, women's lack of access to and effective control over land may therefore threaten the well-being of many household members. Poverty and well-being are not necessarily closely correlated: women in better-off and highercaste households are also disadvantaged in this respect by their lack of access to and control over land. On efficiency grounds, women are often the sole or de facto heads of households and, on the assumption that greater tenure/ title security provides production incentives, granting them independent title to land is likely to lead to higher agricultural output. However, this is only true to the extent that existing gender biases in agricultural support services and factor markets are corrected. Indeed, recent experience with savings and loans groups in India suggests that women are frequently better credit risks than men.

The equality and empowerment arguments concern women's access to land relative to that of men, rather than their access to land in absolute terms. Strengthening women's relative access to land will help increase their bargaining power and ability to challenge male dominance both within the household and within the wider community. Some of the most persuasive arguments relate to women's ability to escape situations of marital abuse and physical violence. A common complaint from women against joint land titles, for example, is that they will remain bound to their husband even in the case of marital breakup. Various social norms and pressures reinforce women's relative lack of access to and control over land. In addition to those already mentioned, intimidation, the threat of violence, and litigation are widely invoked by relatives to prevent women from pressing legal claims over land (Agarwal 1994a, 1995). The logistics of dealing with the bureaucratic obstacles to land transfers are particularly formidable for women who are already disadvantaged through illiteracy, seclusion, social stigma and lack of political voice. Local government officials also represent major impediments: for example, village record keepers may refuse to register land holdings in the sole name of widows, only jointly with their sons. There is evidence that Operation Barga in West Bengal was also biased towards the registration of male rather than female tenant farmers (Gupta 1993), in spite of its success in other respects.

In view of such deeply embedded obstacles, what policy approaches hold most promise in securing better access to and control over land for women in rural India? Further legal reform may be worthwhile in some cases. Much land reform legislation was enacted before women's land rights were considered worthy of policy attention in their own right, during the 1980s 26