Publication: How Did India Successfully Reform Women’s Rights? Part I: Answers from the Movement on Equal Inheritance Rights
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2025-04-17
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2025-04-17
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This two-part policy brief series traces the development and reform of law in India related to three critical areas that affect women’s rights and economic opportunities: women’s property rights, domestic violence, and sexual harassment in the workplace. It explores the underlying factors and driving forces that led to reforms as well as the broad processes and extensive timelines required for change. It also highlights the remaining gaps in the rights for Indian women, including how the absence of robust implementation as well as inadequate administrative and infrastructural support for reform—coupled with deeply entrenched patriarchal mindsets—often makes real gender equality elusive for many. The achievements in India, which are the result of years of concerted efforts and thought leadership by multiple governmental and nongovernmental players, private actors, and women’s rights activists, could function as a “how to” guide for other countries that may want to carry out similar reforms in the future. This first brief in the series explores the reform of (Hindu) women’s inheritance rights. Starting in 1975, several states reformed the (federal) Hindu Succession Act of 1956, improving women’s rights to inheritance, until a federal reform occurred in 2005. However, additional reforms are needed in order to overcome gender discriminatory legal provisions.
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“Braunmiller, Julia Constanze; Santagostino Recavarren, Isabel; Mittal, Aparna; Khatri, Tanvi. 2025. How Did India Successfully Reform Women’s Rights? Part I: Answers from the Movement on Equal Inheritance Rights. Global Indicators Briefs; No. 19. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43085 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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