Abstract
This study addresses the gap between policy and practice on the issue of women’s right to own rural land through a qualitative study conducted in Pakistan’s two largest provinces, Punjab and Sindh. A recent survey finds that only 4% of women own rural land in Pakistan. Given the relatively large agrarian economy, land is a key resource determining women’s agency. To understand the dynamics that maintain this status quo, I use two distinct strands of feminist theory. First is Joan Acker’s organizational theory of gender and class structures, to explore the inequality regimes embedded in rural patriarchy. Second, I adapt Suad Joseph’s conceptualization of patriarchal connectivity to show how in rural Pakistan, valorizing kinship works to exclude women from matters pertaining to land and silencing demands for their inheritances. This framework simultaneously allows for a fine-grained analysis of the politico-economic and social structures of rural society, while building an intimate understanding of familial relations. The findings show how land is discursively defined as a collective good to ensure that landed patriarchs remain entrenched within the political and economic order of the state, limiting possibilities, for women, of acquiring agency through owning and controlling rural land. The study also upends the widespread myth of Islamic misogyny, for it demonstrates the political economy of patriarchal domination over religion in Pakistan.
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Notes
The rest is accounted for by small and medium-sized landholdings.
All names have been changed to protect participant identity.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Sanaa Rafique and Ayesha Khalid for excellent fieldwork and research assistance. Thanks is also due to the special issue editors and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and encouragement. The manuscript benefited significantly from their insights.
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Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar declares that she has no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individuals that were part of this study.
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Zulfiqar, G.M. Inequality Regimes, Patriarchal Connectivity, and the Elusive Right to Own Land for Women in Pakistan. J Bus Ethics 177, 799–811 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05097-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05097-y