Women and Land-holding Rights in India: Gender Discrimination Riddled with Agony

Abstract

Globally women are deprived of access to land-holding rights and means of production. The discrimination seems pervasive trickling down from top to the bottom of our social fabric of society in India. It goes to an extent, that a family—an agency of the socialization, itself, neglects their daughter/s by keeping her/them away from possession, ownership, succession, inheritance of family property, and by denying equal opportunities for education or employment. There exist many pieces of research in the world pressing upon the need and relevance of securing property and landholding rights for women for empowering them in a real sense. As has been claimed, access to the property and arable land can contribute not only to raising the situation of women rather in education and overall development of the society too. The present study is an attempt to explore various nuances relating to the issue of access to the property by women in India. Existing literature on the topic has been rigorously gone through and highlighted for building a discourse deliberating the need for recognizing property rights for women in India. The paper emphasis how without taking any sympathetic approach towards women empowerment, it is high time to make a call for a right-based approach for women to their landholding rights.