THIS is unacceptable that the authorities that celebrate women’s empowerment and speak of ending gender-based discrimination have not heeded women’s demand for equal rights to land and property. Women’s rights activists have for long asked the government to reform the inheritance law to ensure that women’s access and right to inheritance are based on equality. Rights activists at a discussion that the Association for Land Reform organised on July 25 once again put forth the demand, criticising the government for its failure to ensure women’s equal right to land and demanding that it should ensure the full implementation of the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. As a signatory to CEDAW, Bangladesh is bound to put its provisions to practice, but successive governments have maintained reservations about two articles — 2 and 16 — which included equal rights and responsibilities during wedding and its dissolution. Article 2 calls on states to make laws and regulations, implement policies and change practices to eliminate discrimination against women and Article 16 addresses equal rights for women in wedding, family planning, property ownership and occupation. Bangladesh ratified CEDAW in 1984, but with reservations.

Marriage registration, rights to earned resources and property, guardianship and adoption are now defined under separate family laws followed by different religious and ethnic communities. The laws are mostly based on religion, which creates layers of division in society rather than giving protection. Muslim women are entitled to inheritance, but not as equally as their male counterparts. Women in the Hindu community, meanwhile, do not have any right to inheritance. Moreover, women in all religions and communities are deprived of the few rights that the laws give them. As a result, less than 13 per cent of rural women own land legally and only 4–5 per cent of them have control over their land. Successive governments in justification of their reservations about CEDAW and a uniform law have cited that the articles conflict with the shariah, which governs personal matters such as wedding, divorce and inheritance. Activists consider the reservation a manifestation of the government’s inherent patriarchal bias and its lack of will as many shariah-governed Muslim countries have ratified CEDAW without any reservations. What the government has failed to realise is that an unequal right to land contributes to widespread gendered discrimination. Unequal rights also ideologically endorse the patriarchal assumption that men are the providers and protectors of inheritance and create grounds for son preference, dowry or domestic violence.

The government must, therefore, attend to the legal and policy inequality, amend the inheritance law by granting women an equal access, and withdraw its reservations about the CEDAW articles to eliminate gender inequality. Women of all communities must also be aware of their rights and raise their voice against the structure of oppression that treats them as economically burdensome and work towards establishing an equal society.