Women and Property in Urban India

Abstract

Half the world's population now lives in cities. Governments and agencies have made housing the poor a priority, but few studies or initiatives focus on women's needs. Based on research conducted in Ahmedabad in collaboration with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), this book maps the constraints and opportunities that low-income women throughout the Global South face in securing property, which remains overwhelmingly in male hands. Their vulnerabilities open a window to assess not only land tenure and property laws but also theoretical approaches to gender and development. Although the development community holds out microcredit financing as one potential solution, these women's stories reveal its glaring limitations. By highlighting the importance of property as a material and symbolic asset in women's empowerment, this book carves out new intellectual space in the study of gender and development.

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