This book makes a pioneering contribution to the literature on `Women and Development' in arguing that the single most important economic factor aecting women's situation in South Asia is the gender gap in control over arable land. Agarwal argues for a shift in emphasis from employment, which has preoccupied grassroots organizations and planners as the principal way to improve women's economic well-being, towards giving women ownership and control over arable land. As arable land will continue to be the most signi®cant form of property in rural South Asia in the foreseeable future, and a critical determinant of economic well-being, social status and political power, this is the most critical entry for women's empowerment. Agarwal supports this central thesis by a careful interpretation of a plane of historical and ethnographic information, tracing regional variations in women's property rights and the eect of this on women's status, and locates this evidence in the context of wider data bases on women's social and economic status in ®ve South Asian countries. Supported by her own ®eld research and interviews with women, what emerges is a comprehensive overview of the importance of property rights in determining gender inequities, the social processes which act as barriers to women's landownership and control, as well as proposals on how these can be challenged.
The central theoretical premise of the book is that gender relations are the outcome of processes of bargaining and contestation in dierent arenas, especially the household, the market, the community and the State. The dialectical link between women's ability to claim and control land, and the social constructions of gender roles, is noted throughout the book. In exploring the determinants of con¯ict and cooperation, Agarwal oers new perspective on the processes by which gender relations are constituted, and illustrates the importance of contesting these in all areas. For instance, she traces the structural links between women's land rights, and social practices such as post-marital residence and sexual restrictions on women, and shows that women's exclusion from processes of public decision-making has left them vulnerable to the erosion of their property rights. Agarwal suggests that the struggle which women face is not only one over legal rights and land, but over ideological constructions of gender which prevent women from retaining control over land even if they own it. She considers the links between gender consciousness and dierent forms of resistance (covert, overt, collective and individual) in a thoughtful elaboration of the existing literature, and argues that a fundamental alteration to the existing structure of property rights in land depends on women acting overtly and collectively. The very process of struggle for land rights, not only the end result, is important for women's empowerment, because it involves challenging unequal gender relations at many levels, such as social norms and public decision-making bodies. The book aims to bring the issue of women's land rights into the central focus of policy-makers and of gender-progressive grassroots groups, and makes an important contribution to both land reform theory and policy.