GENDER AND PROPERTY RIGHTS

Jabbar provides an economic analysis of social equality and land ownership in Bangladesh.

The author (an agricultural economist, professor of economic theory, and gender, agriculture, and development researcher) explores women’s land ownership in Bangladesh in the context of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and other measures of financial and social equality. The book opens with deep dives into standards for equity, methods of measurement, definitions of gender, family, and household, and the definition of poverty. Jabbar argues that women’s property ownership is heavily influenced by cultural traditions and country-specific legal structures and can only be fully comprehended in a fully developed cultural context—in the case of Bangladesh, this includes an understanding of both Sharia-influenced inheritance laws and the different paths sons and daughters generally follow as they move into adulthood and create their own family units. The author follows this background discussion with specific looks at the land ownership patterns of 10 Bangladeshi families, then concludes the book with a comprehensive analysis. The language is often technical (“individualistic, rights-based approaches common in international discourses have limited resonance with the daily lives of men and women from countries with a weak culture of individual rights”) though not incomprehensible, and readers will not require more than a cursory familiarity with development economics to follow the arguments. The text is fairly dense, however, making the book primarily of interest to specialist readers, with a limited general audience appeal. Jabbar writes clearly and makes coherent and well-presented arguments, offering the reader a valuable new understanding of how to measure progress in women’s equality in the context of land ownership. The book includes a substantial amount of fully sourced data without getting bogged down in minutiae, making the issues relatable to the reader and contextualizing the facts and figures as needed. While this is not a book many would pick up for a casual read, it does an excellent job of meeting the needs of its intended audience, presenting a well-developed perspective on a challenging topic.

A dense but approachable guide to understanding gender equality as it relates to land ownership.