Despite legal reforms, women's ownership of property in India remains limited. Analyse the causes and suggest measures to turn legal rights into actual control over assets.

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 gave daughters an equal right to inherited property. Yet only 11.6% of households have a woman who owns agricultural land [1]. The gap now lies less in the law than in social norms, the design of State programmes and missing data.

Causes: why rights do not become ownership

• Patriarchal norms: male-biased inheritance customs persist. Women more often inherit land as widows than as daughters [1].
• The household as the unit: wasteland redistribution allots land to the household and assumes members share it equally [1].
• Unequal sharing within the family: men and women often do not pool resources, so women stay vulnerable despite household ownership [1].
• Statistical invisibility: SAAH 2019 does not record land title by gender. One study found only 41% of female household heads owned land [1]. What is not counted is not monitored.
• Title without control: of PMAY-U houses carrying a woman's name, about 49.6 lakh are hers alone and 39.4 lakh are joint [2]. A joint title alone does not let her block a sale or mortgage.

Measures: from title to control

• Legal review: the NCW, a statutory body set up in 1992, is mandated to recommend amendments to laws [3]. It should audit gaps in succession, tenancy and joint-property law. Spousal consent should be required before any joint asset is sold or mortgaged.
• Use existing protection: the PWDVA, 2005 already treats denying a woman access to resources, or disposing of property, as economic abuse [3]. Protection officers need training to apply it.
• Women's names on land records: SVAMITVA has prepared about 2.76 crore property cards [4]. Women should be co-owners by default on these cards and in mutation entries.
• Count owners, not households: surveys should record land title for each person [1].
• Make assets usable: link titles to credit through SHGs, run legal-literacy drives and discourage forced relinquishment deeds.

Women's limited ownership comes from norms, programme design and missing data more than from gaps in the law. Recording titles in women's names, measuring individual ownership and enforcing existing protections would turn rights on paper into real control. This would advance Article 39(b), SDG 5.a (women's ownership and control of land) and women-led development for Viksit Bharat@2047.