Perception and practices of parental property right to women in Nepal

Abstract

The “Property is a set of social relations. Embedded in these are social behaviour and gender relations”. Since the capacity to act is circumscribed to a large extent by the forms of familial, conjugal and kinship relations, the degree of women's independence in rural world and another hand the right, in any form of property, are claims that are legally and socially recognized and enforceable by external legitimized authority. The property can be acquired through gifts, through inheritance, and through work/earnings. The last also presupposes the ability to work and earn which requires some level of skill/education, and/or access to productive resources (land, capital). For women, these prerequisites are also decided and defined through social-cultural prescriptions. Property rights matter for their effects on economic inequality and economic performance, and they unfold at the intersection of law, the state, politics, and the economy. Historical parental property rights systems are different systems of property rights among various people. Anthropological and sociological studies have been made about customs of parental property, inheritance, where only male children can inherit or have rights of parental property. Some cultures also employ matrilineal succession, where property can only pass along the female line, most commonly going to the sister's sons of the decedent; but also, in some societies, from the mother to her daughters. Some ancient societies and most modern states employ egalitarian inheritance, without discrimination based on gender and/or birth order. Western societies around the world, finds consistent correlations between the gender and birth order of a child and his or her outcome in life, and these include differences in the degree of property control: the first son, in comparison to other sons, has more control of property. Scholarly defined that the parental property equal rights is the rights of son and daughter upon parents’ properties, rights to ownership into the parents’ properties, rights to get properties earned by parents, rights of properties acquired in accordance with the inheritance, ownership rights to house, money, land and other properties earned by parents and forefather. This dissertation is prepared on the basis of social theory, economic theory, political theory, distributive justice theory, labour theory of property, women development theories (WIN, WAD, GAD and GEA). Cultural theory, Dependency theory and basic needs approach, capability approach and eco-feminism approach theories. This Ph.D. Dissertation entitle “Perception and Practices of Parental Property Right To Women in Nepal {A study from the students of different Law Colleges of Kathmandu Valley” is carried out with objectives to find out the perception and practices of parental properties distribution system between son and daughter, to explore the cause and factors to enhancing unequal property distribution system between son and daughter, to examine the consequences of equal rights on parental property between son and daughter and to analyze the changes in parental property distribution systems after Democracy restoration 2046 B.S. The appropriate research questionnaires were set out according to the objectives This study will be significant reference source for the person and institution that are associated in concerned field and also will be useful to Nepal government for further formulation of the necessary policy program on parental property rights. This study has been widely coverage issues of parental property rights’ ie concept, definition, practice, perception, policy and programs by global, continental regions, SAARC regions and nations self. There has been restricted till some points to collect and analyzed the irrelevant information which means researcher has been not collected the information besides parental property equal rights. This small sample size can not generalized to whole nation. But it will be helpful to conceptualize the importance of issues to formulation the part of policy programs for intervene of the present problems regarding parental property equal distribution between son and daughters. The study has been organized into 10 chapters. This study is based on cross sectional descriptive and analytical types of research design and it has been carried out the qualitative and quantitative information from primary and secondary sources. The study has been analyzed the perception and practice of people, socio cultural, economic and political influence in the parental property equal rights of male and female. The qualitative information was collected from focus group discussion and micro level observation of non human being creature’s communities and reviewed different publications, national and international journal. empirical research reports, report of national and international conventions’ declaration, scholars articles, focus group discussion and direct interview of respondent and quantitative information was generation the basis of research questions. The required information were collected through census methods in the law campuses of the Kathmandu Valley using the purposive sampling methods. Furthermore, 12 people were selected from same study population for focus group discussion. The non human community members were selected as purposively to observation of their creativity sharing and demanding the properties owned by their family members or members of homogenous communities. Total 293 students of LLM, and BALLB level from Law Campuses of Kathmandu Valley were directly interviewed using pre-structured questionnaires. The focus group discussion was done according to certain pre-planned framework in the specific issues. Micro level observation was done into three different non human creature communities. The collected data was edited (data entry, processing, scrutiny, tabulation etc), post code and process in the computer. The data were analyzed by used of statistical data management software program- SPSS, P4C by generating frequency table and cross tables to describe the basic characteristic and examine the relationship between independent and depended variables. Among the study population. 53.9 percent were male and rest were female. 53.9 percent population were from age group 20-24 years. Major 4 caste/ethnic group namely Brahmin, Chhetri, Newar and Gurung were recognized highest percent (93.2%) were Hinduism. There is no similarity in the meaning of parental property perceiving by culturally different people. The gender discrimination is the biasness in holistic rights and achievement on the basis of gender. Basically, socio-culture, norms, value, belief, culture transformation, generation transformation, low education level, joint family system, son preference society, male dominant society, agricultural occupation, dowry system, unequal property distribution between son and daughter, ignorance are the main reasons of gender discrimination. The exiting parental property equal rights act, law and policy programs are rightful by various reason but needs to be strongly implemented. Furthermore, monitoring and evaluation part need to be conducted to measures the level of its effectiveness. The parental property equal rights for women is more appropriated by various dimensions. However, the parental property equal rights system could helpful to reduce the poverty. The majority of the study populations have recommended for the equal education opportunity to both sons and daughters rather than distribution of the equal properties of parents. The urban residential women are highly facilitated and enjoying of their rights comparing to rural women so which is not justice to compare the urban - rural women’s life style in Nepal. The society people are very afraid with possibility of un-intimacy between sisters and brotherhood, family clash and division of properties into small pieces after providing the equal parental property. The equal demand of properties owned by family members of homogenous groups, and semi homogenous group is also in practice in non human being creatures communities for their equal existing, equal prestige and equal dignity within their respective communities. Therefore, the parental properties equal rights for female are also the demand of female for their equal existing, equal prestige and equal dignity within their respective societies. So the existing parental property equal rights need to be strongly implemented with effective and respective ways as a fundamental right for basic needs. But equal distribution system of parental property should be used until not properly implementation or practices for the provision of equal sustainable education for son and daughter. Thereafter, the provision of parental property equal rights does not need like developed countries.