Do students support equal rights to land and inheritance? Reflections from Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

The issue of inheritance rights in Bangladesh is a debatable one, given the many laws provided in different religions and varied interpretations of these. This study is focused on assessing students’ perceptions about gender equality with respect to inheritance of land. Primary data were collected from university students in Bangladesh using Simple Random Sampling (SRS) technique. Binary Logistic Regression (BLR) was used to assess research outcomes and whether or not the respondents supported women’s equal rights to inherit land. Our results show that female students were more supportive of equal rights to inheritance compared to their male counterparts. We also identify some reasons underlying the varying responses, as in many cases such attitudes were due to the presence of working women in the families of some respondents. In contrast, those who were knowledgeable about Sharia or Islamic laws did not support women’s right to inheritance.

ABSTRACT IN BANGLA

KEYWORDS:

• Rights of inheritance
• gender
• equality
• Sharia
• Bangladesh

KEYWORDS:

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Acknowledgements

We would like to offer our sincere gratitude to the respondents who participated in this study. We are also thankful to Professor Ishtiaq Jamil, PhD, Hasan Muhammad Beniamin, PhD and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jinat Hossain

Jinat HOSSAIN is a PhD scholar in the Division of Geography and Tourism, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her PhD work is on climate change, gender, and social innovation and her interest covers multi-disciplinary issues connected to gender and feminist theories. Some of the themes she is working on are gendered policy, land rights, migration, religion, the gendered body, sexuality, and masculinity. She is also Assistant Professor (on-leave) at Noakhali Science and Technology University (NSTU), Bangladesh and a fiction writer and visual director.

Kazi Tanvir Mahmud

Kazi Tanvir MAHMUD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Economics at Southeast University (SEU) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research interests mainly include microcredit and women empowerment; food security; agricultural training; and the zakat system. He has authored several articles on these issues and has also served as a senior researcher in the Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC (a reputed NGO) in Bangladesh and in an international research organization, WorldFish.