This edited volume analyzes the different degrees of discrimination meted out to women by the country’s inheritance laws and the corresponding customary practices in tribal societies. It also exposes the current socio-legal structure in the country, which systematically denies women the accessibility to and ownership of productive resources.
Gender Discrimination in Land Ownership is XIth in the series ‘Land Reforms in India’, initiated by the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. The volume contains 14 well-researched chapters through which distinguished scholars look into the discrimination faced by women in various states of India. Highlighting the fact that different regions subject women to varied forms of discrimination, these chapters reveal that these emanate from various customs and practices, Shastric prescriptions and the Muslim personal laws (Shariat) which were crystallized during the British regime and further consolidated in the post-colonial period through various union, state and concurrent laws.

Apart from describing the discrimination that women are subjected to in terms of legal rights, the collection also proposes ways to counter the same and encourages debate on the current Indian socio-legal system. With its two-pronged concern—analysis of reform laws and their impact on gender—this book will be of interest to academics in fields such as development economics, land laws, gender/women studies and sociology, as well as to policy-makers and administrators.