Gender perspectives on property and inheritance: a global source book.

This book addresses women’s unequal position in formal and customary laws. Many democratic countries have laws favourable to formal equality but they are often unenforced in the absence of strong egalitarian institutions that penetrate down to the village level. In particular rural and poor women have limited means of access to legal systems to challenge and end inequalities. Illiteracy and isolation may exclude women from practical enforcement of rights available to them in theory and traditional attitudes of patriarchal society which may be shared by male judges who see themselves as protectors of social tradition and stability may hamper women’s progress. Male village leaders may be ill informed on the law and official procedures that require women’s equality and they therefore maintain conventional or traditional resolutions of local disputes unselfconscious of their self-interest in maintaining discriminatory practices against women particularly when they are poor and vulnerable. (excerpt)