 Welcome to the wider annual lecture 25 to be provided by Bernard Agarwal on women's struggle for land in South Asia can legal reforms from social norms. I'm Kunan Sen, the director of UNEWIDER and I'm chairing the annual lecture today. I would first like to introduce those of you who have been new to UNEWIDER event to the United Nations University and to UNEWIDER. The United Nations University was established in 1975 to act as a research arm of the United Nations. There are now 14 institutes located in 12 countries around the world. But it was UNEWIDER, the World Institute for Development Crisis Research that was the first research institute in the university back in 1985. Today, UNEWIDER serves as a unique blend of a think tank, research institute and UN agency based in Helsinki, Finland. This event is a 25th annual lecture, so effectively our silver anniversary. The lectures have been delivered by messages, line of scholars and policy makers, four of whom are Nobel laureates. It's a pleasure to welcome Bernard Agarwal to that lineup. Today's lecture will be run for approximately 45 minutes, followed by discussion of Sakiko Fukuda Par. Afterwards, I'll return to chair the Q&A for approximately 10 minutes, for 30 minutes across this. I'll now let you introduce the wider annual lecture for 2021. Bernard Agarwal is professor of development economics and environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this, she was director and professor of economics at the Institute of Economic Growth at the University, where she continues to be affiliated. Educated at the University of Cambridge and Delhi, she's had distinguished teaching research positions at many universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Minnesota and the New York University School of Law. Bernard Agarwal's research contributions cover both theory and empirical analysis, with a particular focus on the most disadvantaged. And economies with a keen interest in interdisciplinary and inter-country explorations, her publications include 12 books and over 80 academic papers. She writes especially from political economy and gender perspective on diverse but interconnected subjects, such as property, land rights and livelihoods, environmental governance, sustainable development and collective action, agriculture, technology and food security, poverty institutional transformation, legal change and intersecting inequalities. Her pioneering work on gender inequality and property and land, as well as on environmental issues, has had global impact. Among her best known works is a field of one's own, Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, Cambridge University Press 1994, which was awarded the A.K. Corosami Book Prize 1996 and the Edward Graham Book Prize 1996. Bernard Agarwal has been President of the International Society of Ecological Economics, Vice President of the International Economic Association and President of the International Association of Feminist Economics. In 2008, Bernard Agarwal was honored with the Padma Sree by the Government of India for her contributions to education. In 2010, she received the Leonty Prize from Tufts University advancing the frontiers of economic thought. She's also been awarded the Order of Agriculture Merit with the Government of France in 2016. In 2017, she was awarded the Agri-Polish Lewis Malice's International Scientific Prize for her outstanding career in agriculture development, as well as the passage of international financial prize. I would like to also welcome the Discussed Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, who is Professor of International Affairs in the New School in New York and serves as the Director of the Julian Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs. She also co-directs the Collective, the Political Determinants of Health at the University of Oslo. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr's recent research focuses on the politics of SDGs and the indicators. From 1995 to 2004, she led the UNDP Human Development Reports. She serves in several boards, global committees and NGO networks advocating for human rights and inclusive development, including the UN Committee on Development Policy, UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicine and Innovation, Knowledge Ecology International, amongst others. In the annual lecture, we now want to speak about women's struggle for equality in rights to property. Women represent over 40% of the agricultural labour force, yet they rarely own land that they're working on, have tenured securities or control over the land. Women's struggle for land and property is central to women's economic empowerment, as land is a base for food production and income generation, as collateral for credit, as a means for holding savings for the future. In India, legal reforms have given a vast majority of women legal equality with men in the country. And the rights of neighboring countries, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, have also increased. Have changes in the law improved women's situation in practice? Have the closed agenda gap in actual land ownership and trumped restrictive social norms and customs? If not, is there a way forward? We now will address these questions in the 2021 wider annual lecture, drawing on the three decades of research on the subject. I would now like to invite, we now go on to deliver the wider annual lecture, 25. We now, over to you. Thank you. Hello, everybody. It's a great honour to be asked to deliver the 25th wider annual lecture. And I am, I warmly thank Professor Kunal Sen for inviting me and for that lovely introduction. I also congratulate him for his many new initiatives when he took over as a head of wider and for extending the reach of wider globally. I would like to also thank Ruby Richardson and her wonderful team for their very hard work on communications and logistics for the last few months. And I'm very pleased that Professor Sakiko Fukuda-Pahar, who's a long standing colleague and friend will be commenting today and I very much look forward to her comments. So almost a century has passed since women in South Asia first raised a demand for equal rights in property, especially land. This is the most important productive property in developing economies. And over time this struggle broadened and diversified. Now, despite resistance from conservative lawmakers, this led to notable legal reforms. As a result, most Indian women today enjoy legal equality with men in their inheritance rights. Women's legal rights have also expanded greatly in neighbouring Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But has it changed ground reality? Have legal reforms helped bridge the gender gap in land ownership? Have they trumped restrictive social norms? If not, what are the ways forward? So these are the questions that I will address today. Now, in the 1930s, newly formed national women's organizations in undivided India, which was then under British colonial rule, raised rights in property as a key demand, partly for its own sake and partly since the right to vote and to stand for elections was linked to owning property. So you can see some of the pictures of the All India Women's Conference, the Women's India Association here and also the women members of the Constituent Assembly. Across religious lines, women's groups formed committees, they studied the law, they spoke to lawyers, they published pamphlets about women's position and they encouraged legislation to enhance women's status. They were supported by liberal male legislators and these efforts bore some fruit. Initially in 1937 for both Hindu and Muslim women, with some increase in the rights of widows for Hindus. And later, only for Hindu women with the drafting of the Hindu Code Bill in 1942, which among other things sought to enhance the rights of daughters in inheritance. However, as you can imagine, the bill was subject to heated debate when it was introduced in the Constituent Assembly of Independent India in 1948 with mixed responses from male legislators. So for example, during the Constituent Assembly debates and parliamentary debates in the late 1940s and early 50s, one Congress legislator asked, are you going to enact a code that will facilitate the breaking up of households? Another argued that giving property shares to daughters would spell nothing but disaster. And yet another said that if daughters inherited property, they would choose not to marry at all. Crying out, may God save us from an army of unmarried women. And as you can see from this 1948 cartoon, newspapers had a field day playing this up. In the end, however, following delays and compromises, the progressive prevailed, and especially Dr. B. R. M. Bedkar and who was a major figure in the drafting of India's Constitution and Pandit Johar Lal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. And the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 was passed. Although still gender unequal, it shifted women's property rights from a position of gross inequality to a fair degree of equality for over 80% of Indian women. So what was the shift? Now overall, we need to keep in mind that the inheritance systems in South Asia are very complex. They vary by religion, by region and type of property. And land is treated differently from movable property. And this has been always the case, even if you go back to the Dharmashastra. Now, Hindu inheritance law has particular complexities. Most Hindus fall under the purview of the 12th century Mithakshara system, which distinguishes between a man's separate property, which is self acquired, and his joint family property, which are held as co-personary shares. This is ancestral property. Now, prior to the 1956 Hindu Succession Act, the vast majority of Hindu women could only inherit their fathers or their husbands property in the absence of four generations of egnatic males. That is males in the male line of descent. The 1956 Act gave widows and daughters equal shares with sons and brothers in a man's separate property, interstate, that is without leaving a will. But only sons had birth rights and joint family property, which could not be willed away. And agricultural land was subject to state level tenorial laws, which were highly gender unequal. Now, Village India received news of the 1956 law with alarm. And this was recorded by some anthropologists, where they recorded that villagers saw it as a sinister attempt to destroy the family, that it would lead to divorce and intra-family conflicts. Now, this view persisted into the late 1980s. So in 1989, when I made an invited presentation to senior bureaucrats and to cabinet ministers at the Indian Planning Commission, the then Minister of Agriculture exclaimed, are you suggesting that women should be given rights in land? What do women want to break up the family? Ironically, of course, what this implied was that Indian families are characterized by deep inequalities and would fall apart the moment women had independent rights and property. Nevertheless, the trajectory of legal reform continued. So between 1976 and 1994, what you found was that five states in South and West India amended the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. Now, four states did so by bringing in unmarried daughters as co-parsoners in joint property, and Kerala abolished joint family property altogether. And in this map, you can see the southern states, which amended it, partially. But finally, in 2005, following a civil society campaign that I led, the remaining main inequalities in Hindu inheritance law were overcome in both joint family property and farmland. Now, since Hindu law also includes Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, this reform legally benefited some 83% of Indian women and girls. Alongside the inheritance laws of Christians and Parsis also moved towards gender equality. So you'll ask, well, what was the legal change in Hindu law between 1956 and 2005? Now, the 2005 Act gave daughters and widows equal rights with sons in a man's separate property and his share of joint property. Interstate, that is without the will. And in the Mitaksha system, sons additionally had direct rights by birth in joint property, that is, it could not be willed away. What the 2005 amendment did was a major advance. It gave daughters the same rights by birth as sons in joint property, including agricultural land. And the main change was thus in rights of joint property, including land. So I want to spend a minute or two to explain this with the help of diagrams. So if you see this first diagram, it covers the 1956 Hindu Succession Act and I will focus only on the joint property part of it. Now, here you have, let's say a granddad has two sons, S1 and S2, and he has 90 acres of land. But these co-passenary shares of the three are 30 acres each per stir-piece. But S1 has a daughter and a son and a wife, while S2 has no family. Now in S1's 30 acres, he and his son have equal shares, so each has 15 acres. Plus, when S1 dies, his son, his daughter and his widow get equal shares in his joint property. So each gets five acres each. In total, thus the son gets five acres, plus 8.33, which is his own co-passenary share, and his share in the father's co-passenary share. So together, no, not 3.33, he gets 15 plus five, so he gets 20 acres here. Now, what happens when you amend the law? The 2005 amendment, you take the same family and here you have S1's daughter also becomes a co-passenary in joint property. So per stir-piece, the shares of S1 and his son and daughter become 10 acres each. That is the direct co-passenary share. But when S1 dies, his 10 acres is divided three ways, which is 3.33 acres. And now the widow gets 3.33, the daughter and son get equal amounts, which is 13.33 each. So what this means is that while daughters and sons have become equal, the widow has lost with the amendment. And I think it's really important to remember this because the possibility of creating inequalities between women while advocating equality for men is seldom factored in even within women's groups. Now, since the 1950s, other countries in South Asia have also seen legal reform. So, for instance, in Pakistan, the demands by women's groups led to the passing of the West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law Sharea Application Act in 1962. This increased women's rights, including in land, but the prescribed shares were lower than men's as per the sharean. In Hindu Nepal today, after decades of struggle by women's groups again, sons and daughters have equal shares in the father's property. While Sri Lanka historically has always been a bit of an outlier and here women in all religions, even historically, held substantial legal rights in landed property. So across South Asia, women's legal rights have increased and this is undoubtedly a major step forward. And many would say, well, let's stop at legal change. Even the Sustainable Development Goal 5 of on gender equality focuses mainly on legal reform, as do many economists. But equality as an idea needs to be embodied, not just in the laws, but also in the institutions and practices of everyday life. Where are we in practice after a century of effort? Have we bridged the gap between de jure and de facto rights? Has actual practice kept pace with legal reform? Now, an answer to this is of critical importance, since it is actual ownership which can bring women the expected welfare and efficiency gains of owning land that a vast body of empirical work globally shows. So here this is my 1994 book cover, A Field of One's Own. And there's been a vast amount of, there was evidence that I presented in the book, but also since then there's a vast amount of additional evidence which has emerged. So for instance, so there is evidence to show that women's ownership of land has welfare improvements, have efficiency improvements and has empowerment effects apart from the intrinsic work worth of equality. So for instance, child survival, health and education is found to be significantly higher if the mother owns assets than if only the father owns assets. Owning land is also found to greatly reduce women's risk of domestic violence as well as their risk of poverty. Plus, according to the FAO estimates, if women farmers in developing countries had the same access to inputs including land, then their yields could be 20 to 30% higher. And agricultural growth in developing countries could be 2.4 to 3% greater and hunger could decline. Now this will matter increasingly, especially with the feminization of agriculture across the global south. And it would not only help our targets of SDG-5 on gender equality, but also SDG-1 and 2 if you remember, which are on poverty and hunger. So measurement of women's actual ownership of land is essential. But getting gender disaggregated data for assessing the gender gap in ownership has been another uphill struggle across South Asia. So I will share with you some of the figures that I've got together based on existing evidence. What we find is a very large gender gap in land owned across South Asia, even in Sri Lanka. And whatever the indicator that we can calculate by the data that we have. And as you can see, even in Sri Lanka, it's only 30% but across Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and India, the percent of women landowners is very low. And the percent of landowners who are women is also hugely unequal. Now, but ideally, given the complexity of legal rights, we need to cover both individually owned and co-owned land. And we need to use a range of indicators to assess varied dimensions of inequality as well as to monitor changes over time. And we also need to assess either to ignore intra-gender variations since which women acquire land, whether it's as widows or as daughters, can affect the potential benefits, as I've just argued. Now, consider India. None of India's major data sources on land, because the agricultural sensors or the National Sample Survey desegregate land owned by gender, nor do the digitized land records. So after my eye among others have been advocating for such data for decades. And then more recently, a couple of few years ago, I was alerted that the International Crop Research Institute for semi-arid tropics, ICRISAT, had begun gender desegregating data, its data on land owned in 2009-10 in India. It was doing it in Africa, but not for India. Now this is panel data for a sample of households in 30 villages over 2010 to 2014. Initially it was for eight states and then in 2014 for nine. Now this enabled me and my two young colleagues to assess inter-gender gaps in farmland owned using seven indicators. And we also analyzed differences between women, especially between widows and daughters. So in this slide, I will give you, I've given you five indicators for male-female gaps for 2014. And we note that the gaps are huge on all counts. So barely 16% of households have any women land owners in our sample. And just 8.4% of all women aged 15 and more own any land, none own any land below the age of 15. Overall, women constitute only 14% of land owners owning 11% of farmland. But we didn't find any differences in terms of the average area owned or the quality of land. So as you can see by any indicator, there are huge gender gaps. Now if you look at it regionally, as we expect, South India does better, especially in Angra Pradesh and Telangana. But even the best performing state, which is Telangana, here only 32% of land owners are women. And relative to as low as 5.6% in Odisha, which is in Eastern India. Also, we found very little change between 2010 and 2014. Now Telangana is an interesting outlier even for South India. And I believe it is attributable especially to the state's Chief Minister, N.T. Ramarao, whose policies for empowering women made a big difference. And also civil society's active implementation of those policies. Now, given that inheritance law reform has increasingly given daughters rights and joint property, this low figure suggests at least two things. Firstly, that we've had rather a poor impact of the 2005 amendment in practice. If the law were effectively implemented, an increasing percentage of daughters would have acquired land and co-owned it with family members. And secondly, that land is likely not held often as joint property. So the potential gain from this legal reform would have been limited. Only 2% of the holdings were co-owned and only in the southern and western states in our analysis. So we then, what we did was we then analyzed gender inequalities using logistic regressions and economists tend to do that. Now this slide gives you only the marginal effects. And what we found was that the probability of men owning land was 48 percentage points greater than for women owning land. And then very interestingly, as you can see in the second equation, the probability of widows owning land was 22 percentage points greater than for married or single women. So in our study, widowhood is central to women becoming land owners, despite legal changes which have favored daughters. So in 2014, 46% of female owners were widows and most of them were elderly widows. In fact, most female owners had acquired the land through their marital families, sometimes via land purchase with husbands rather than from parents. And a male owner, what tends to happen is that the male owners plots tend to pass to his widow and often also female headship. So we found that 41% of the female owners were also household heads, even though there were adult sons and daughters in the household. And other studies which have not gone into such detail but give us a broad idea also support this. So in all India study for 2010-11 found that 56% of female land owners were widows and again most women obtained their land from marital families. And then state level studies also confirmed that very few women inherited as daughters. Now we must remember that historically, in the 12th century Mithakshra and the Abhag legal treatises, the order of heirs was as follows. First came four generations of men in the male line of descent, only in the absence came the widow, then the unmarried daughter, then the married daughter. Now either getting no land at all or receiving land mostly as aging widows means that most Indian women lack landed assets at a time in their life cycle when ownership would benefit them and their families the most. So for instance, as I noted at the evidence linking women's assets with children's welfare relates especially to mothers of young children. Likewise, it is married women who are who would benefit from the noted link between owning land and reduce risk of spousal violence. And our results I believe also point to the need to reexamine the central premise underlying some recent studies by economists that assume that simply a legal change can change behavior. Now these studies treat the pre 2005 reforms of the Hindu Succession Act of 56 in four states. You remember the four states I had mentioned. They treat this these changes as quasi natural experiments and use econometric tools to capture the effect of legal change in daughters rights on girls education, female suicides and some preferences. But I believe these results need scrutiny on at least two grounds. Firstly, we don't know to what extent parents are aware of the exact legal change of the state specific laws, what the change, you know, especially because they were so fine tuned. And secondly, we find little evidence of daughters go owning land, which is what the legal reforms particularly affected. Now parental resistance to be quitting lot daughters land also remains strong. So then the question is, why don't daughters inherit despite all these legal reforms. And I believe there are two notable factors in particular social norms and the social legitimacy of claims. Now, talking about social norms has now become quite fashionable among us economists, but we need to ask with social norms. The norms that matter most in relation to property I believe are marriage norms. So as you can see in these two top maps in this left map, the greener it is the better. The left map is on village endogamy and the dark green is where women can marry within the village and white where it is forbidden and light green is where it's mixed. And as you can see in Pakistan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, it is dark green because in predominantly Muslim societies you are able to marry within the village. The right hand side maps looks at close can marriages. And this is this means that whether you can marry your cross cousin or uncle niece marriages. And again, you find a very similar pattern to the village endogamy norms. Now Hindu Hindu families in North India where it's white forbid marriages within the village and to close in and both aspects are linked to notions of incest and shared body particles. So you actually cannot marry anybody related to you within several generations through either parent. Daughters here are perforce married to strangers at long distances and they are seen as belonging to another family. So giving them land is seen as losing the land forever. And here they're strong resistance to giving women land in South India. By contrast, Hindu families do allow village and close can marriages between cross cousins and uncle niece and this potentially help would help the land remain within the family and the village. It is also easier for women to manage the land. And here there is less resistance to the idea of endowing daughters, although in practice not many do so. Now I must emphasize that these are clearly cultural norms and not religious norms because both in North India and South India we're talking about Hindu families. In mainly Muslim nations as I said in Pakistan in Bangladesh in village and close can marriages are allowed but little not that much practiced. The second set of norms we should consider what I call female seclusion norms and we can think of female seclusion in two ways. Firstly, there's the practice of wailing and secondly the gender segregation of public space. Now both restrict women's mobility and the ability to manage land. Now among Hindus wailing is practiced. So I'll give you this slide and you can see that among Hindus wailing is practiced in North India but not in the South and Northeast India. And here you can see very contrasting pictures. This is Rajasthan in Northwest India and here you have women sitting and having a meeting in South India and in both cases they are at meetings. And I want to share this particular very interesting picture with you as well because here you these are all Hindu women in Northwest India and you'll notice that one woman is not wailed and the others are. And these are all daughters in law in the village and she is the daughter. So the point is that these social norms even of wailing are extremely intricate and vary a lot within Hindu communities. Among Muslims wailing is a norm more generally but actually adherence again varies regionally and by class. But beyond wailing is the gender segregation of public space and I would like to argue that this is common across many cultures. So in South Asia for instance good women are expected to avoid spaces dominated by men especially village markets and tea shops. Now these are the spaces where you have informal networking for farm transactions and this particularly restricts women farmers. But such segregation I might remind people was also common in the West for instance in England in late 19th century. And those of you who read Thomas Hardy's far from the Madding crowd will recall that Bathsheba Everdeen the young woman farmer was extremely discomfited when she first entered the corn market which was a very male space indeed. So what I'm suggesting is that the idea of gender segregation of space is much more common across cultures than wailing and but it restricts women's public interactions unless they have a critical mass. And all the seclusion norms are of course declining even in South Asia because more and more women are entering public life. It is difficult to change marriage norms which are linked to ideas of kinship and incest. Now beyond social norms is the con is the idea of the social legitimacy of claims and there are diverse notions about who deserves to inherit your property. And many of you would have particular notions of who would deserve to inherit what property you own. Now in some cultures it is the one who performs your last rights which is for instance among Hindus they favor sons. Blood ties are emphasized in all cultures but not equally so some may favor men over women. Then marital ties many cultures favor widows over other heirs and this is true interestingly even in Europe. And then proximity of residence is given emphasis in some communities by implication the ideas who will look after you in old age. So in fact in Sri Lanka daughters who marry outside the village cannot claim land but if they return on divorce they get a share. And more generally one can argue that for land what can also matter is who is likely to farm it. Now given all these social norms and ideas of legitimacy how can we better implement gender progressive laws. So for a start you will say well we need awareness campaigns for women for their families and specially for the administrative officers who register land inheritance claims. Now women also need support to resist pressure to sign away their shares in favor of brothers as many tend to do in across South Asia. Now many see brothers as their social security after the parents pass away. Widows however tend to keep their land on behalf of themselves and their children specially their sons. Now women who wish to legally contest their claims need legal aid and guidance but few contest this. So I have an ongoing project and I have a research team we are looking at online high court cases and we looked at cases from 2005 to 2020 and found only 113 cases across India of a woman co-pastner filing a case in a trial court or directly in the high court. Of course the online cases will not cover all the cases but they are reflective. 67% of these cases were in courts in South and West India and in most cases the opposing party was the brother. Now I know that rural women's groups in India such as WGWLO or Makaam which is an all India women farmers platform has been have been doing gender sensitization training of village administrative officers. They have been doing media awareness campaigns and subjecting cases where daughters sign away their rights to legal scrutiny. I might mention that there are women's groups and lawyers in Pakistan also who have been very active in this regard. But despite these efforts family resistance to endowing daughters remains strong. So at least in the short run we need to ask or think of other ways of enhancing women's land rights. Also I would like to argue that we need to think of a group approach and not just individual access. So what are these other ways? Well beyond the family as the state and the market. Now state governments in many countries have given direct transfers of land to poor households as part of anti poverty programs. And now in India these are given to poor women either solely or jointly with spouses. But we know that the state has rather limited surplus land. The market is another possibility but individual women farmers lack financial resources. However the state can support women's access to land markets in different ways. One is via subsidy to purchase land and the Andhra Pradesh government in the 1980s in fact launched a loan come grant scheme to help groups of Dalit women buy land. And 10 of them would get together to buy let's say 10 acres and register an acre each in each woman's name. You can also support women in land leasing Kerala and some other states all women's groups are leasing in land. But doing it in groups would be a big step forward because it can also help women farmers overcome production constraints. So I'm going to illustrate this with the example of Kerala where I've done more detailed research. Now in the 2000s under the state's poverty eradication mission of the government of Kerala Khudum Shri group farming was promoted. And here women initially joined neighborhood groups for savings and credit. And then those who wish to could pull the resources to lease in land which they cultivate jointly and they equitably share labor costs and benefits. They receive some support from the state in terms of a startup grant technical training and access to subsidized credit from NABAD which is the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. And the there are 68000 such groups and more with involving more than 300,000 women in Kerala and here you can see a picture of one of these groups operating a party level. Now what I wanted to do was to compare the relative performance of all women's group farms and individual family farms. So I collected data over 2012 and 14. It is a survey or a sample of 250 farms which included all women group farms and individual family farms in two districts of Kerala and we collected weekly data. It was very ambitious. So it was weekly data for all inputs and outputs over an entire entire year for every plot and crop and we also collected qualitative data via focus group discussions. We found that the average size of a group was six. All the members were literate. Many of them had completed secondary school. And interestingly the groups were economically disadvantaged homogenous relatively homogeneously but they were socially heterogeneous by caste and religion. Now we know that standard collective action theory would argue that homogeneity is important for promoting cooperation. But here we find that actually some degree of social heterogeneity helped in expanding the social capital base of the groups and hence their access to land. Now the groups cultivate about one hectare on average which is about three times more than the individual farms. And they lease in land while the individual farmers 95% of which are male managed own all or most of the land they cultivate. So we can see that the state support somewhat levels the playing field for women's group but not versus the male managed group but not fully because clearly leasing in land leads to high transaction costs. So what did we find? What we found was that the annual value of output of group farms was 1.8 times that of individual family farms. Groups did specially well in banana cultivation and I also calculated the annual returns by deducting the paid out costs and found that the annual net returns per farm was five times higher than of individual largely male managed farms and 1.6 times higher per hectare. Now some of the groups had even used their profits to purchase land. Now women as managers had also learned a lot of new technical skills. They had learned the ability to negotiate in multiple markets and they reported improved status in family and community. And many had stood for have stood for village council elections and one. So it's improved their status socially as well as politically. Importantly to group farms did much better than individual family farms in terms of economic survival and food security under COVID when we had a national lockdown in 2020 March April. So in Kerala for instance of the 30,000 group farms which are harvesting under national lockdown it is 7% survived economically by large numbers of individual farmers lost out. And in some of the some other states group farms have come up in West and East India and here again they are reporting that they are much more food secure than if they had been doing individual family farming. And many of these groups have come up around 2015 to 18. So then let me let me conclude that after a century of struggle women in South Asia have gained significant legal rights in landed property. Now among Hindus in India daughters who had few rights in the 1930s today have equal rights with sons in a man's separate and joint family property as well as direct rights by birth in ancestral property. Wherever this applies Hindu women in Nepal also now enjoy equal rights with brothers in their father's property and Muslim women have strong but unequal rights across South Asia. In practice, however gender inequality in land ownership remains high across all countries by multiple indicators. And in India the women most likely to own land are older widows whose claims continue to enjoy much more social legitimacy than though that of daughters. So on this count not much has changed over this last century and one might even argue possibly since the 12th century when the Mitaksha legal treatise also favored widows over daughters. But for monitoring the impact of inheritance law reform as emphasized in SDG 5 we need to collect data that captures the specifics of the legal reforms. And and none none have done so thus far. Also for enhancing women's access to land in practice. I believe we need to go beyond inheritance and frame state policies which improve women's market access to land through lease or purchase. And this market access is likely to improve if women acquire and cultivate land in groups. Now existing examples of group farming and by all women's groups by several regions in India demonstrate that this can not only improve women's land access and productivity but it can also empower them socially and politically. Of course we know that leasing in land cannot bridge in itself gender gaps in ownership but we could think of it as an interim way forward. And as the example of Kerala telling on our shows government policy can make a big difference if it is supported at the highest level for instance at the level of the chief ministers. Yet the basic question does remain when will there be gender equality and land ownership in practice. How can we help legal reforms Trump disabling social norms. So thank you. You know thanks for a very fascinating annual lecture. You make the very important argument that legal reforms are necessary but by no means sufficient in bringing about equality in land ownership land rights for women versus men, especially in society to have entrance social norms. So I think it's also interesting and we can pick it up in the Q&A that they are practical steps one can take both by the state and civil society to address this norms and to bring about equality of access to land for both for women versus men. I would like to turn now to the discussant sake go for the power was going to provide comments on your very interesting and a lecture for about 10 minutes. So keep going over to you. Thank you. I'm mute. Thank you very much. So thank you canal for the invitation to serve as a discussant to this wonderful lecture. I mean it's a real pleasure as well as an honor. I must say I'm one of the admirers of being as work particularly because I myself am very interested in rural issues for many years in the early part of my career I worked on rural development and the issues of food security and being as pioneering work in this field is very well known how 1994 award winning book is a sort of a seminal work on this on this issue on these issues of land and land ownership as a driving factor for women's autonomy agency and empowerment as well as for as a factor behind the improvements in other aspects of development such as education and health reduction in violence and so forth, as well as productivity efficiency. And you know that her scholarship is has been widely noted and recognized for particularly for the rigor of the empirical analysis. And the cross disciplinary approach that she takes that effectively very effectively combines historical legal and anthropological methods and sources. And I personally find that there are two things that most admirable in her work. The first is that it is very much rooted in an understanding of the realities of women's lives. And that is because she does such detailed field work. Really talking to people, you know, and this is in a sense, it's a bit of a sad commentary because it's, it's in such a far cry stands in such contrast from so much of what we read these days, which, in fact, is kind of laboratory analysis of data. The second thing that is that is so admirable is that she it is driven by a clear motivation in a search for women's emancipation and empowerment. And so her she is bringing the analytical power of scholarly research to identify the key obstacles as we have so so so clearly heard in her in her lecture. But I'd like to point out that, you know, it's because she doesn't just stop at publishing papers and being a scholar but also she enters into the fray of activism for change as you've heard speaking to ministers and so forth. And I'd like to ask a couple of questions. First, you know, been in your analysis of of women's rights land land rights in 1994. You have a last chapter that is says that is has a title the long march ahead. Right. And that was in 1994. So, thinking about this journey from 1994 to 2021. How do you contrast, you know, your, your, your thinking in 1994, compared with your thinking today, I mean, are you more optimistic, are you surprised by the progress are you surprised by the obstacles that have cropped up. So, share with us a little bit the trajectory of your own thinking about where you have been surprised where you have changed your mind, whether you have had the right kind of the same that you have predicted what was going to, to come out. The second thing is about the social norms and the legitimacy of social norms and I think it's very interesting. It's really fascinating the way that you have looked at the norms of seclusion and and marriage to identify some of these norms that are actually getting in the way. And of course, the legitimacy of norms as well. But then I wonder to what extent these norms are reinforcing economic interests and power hierarchies within households and within the community, because, you know, I wonder, for example, that if you have a society where women are marrying within the household and as I think you point this out as and within the community and the village, then they're not going to be moving away. And the family as an economic enterprise, so to speak, does not lose the property because it stays kind of within the families, so to speak. I mean, are these economic interests playing in here. And if that's what's really driving it, not just kind of adherence to norms. I mean, I think the trouble with this thing called social norms is this nebulous thing that it exists. But actually, you know, norms are changing all the time. Social norms evolve, cultural values evolve. And they're also not monolithic in a sense that in a country like India you have incredible diversity of norms. Right. But then you have this constant of nonetheless a constant obstacle that can be somehow attributed to these social norm factors. And, you know, obviously, the power relations within households and community makes a difference to how these social norms change and where when whether the legitimacy of norms also evolved. So the third thing is about these government policies. I mean, okay, obviously there is legal reform and their social norms. But in between, there are as you have already pointed out, the factor of government policy and government action and you've pointed out the importance of political leadership. In certain states that is lacking in other states that has made a difference. Also the importance of society. Activism. And, you know, could you say a little bit more about the details of what what those mechanisms are. But before I finish, I want to make another set of comments about the importance of Venus lecture that goes beyond the topics that she has discussed. That is that, you know, wider annual lectures I think are very significant there because they are kind of a marker in the direction that the field of development economics research is going. And I think that Venus work points to very important directions in the field. And that is number one, as I had already mentioned, the importance of multidisciplinary analysis that draws on historical ethnographic legal and anthropological sources and methods. And I think we need more of that in development economics research that the second thing is the role of research and the political alliances that are made between researchers and activists and politicians in actually bringing about change. And I think this is something that that has been observed in other efforts, particularly written up in India about, you know, what led to this legislation such as right to right to food bill and things of that kind where, you know, intellectuals play a very important role in bringing the evidence based research. Necessary for the kind of policy change arguments that need to be made. And I think this, you know, when we think about how economics can be more relevant, I think this is one of the elements that we need to sort of think about how scholars as can also become more involved in building alliances with social activists and political actors. And finally, I really want to applaud this lecture because this is I think this is the first lecture in feminist economics. I looked at the list of wonderful speakers that you have had in giving the annual lecture. And this is indeed I think the first one that falls in the domain of feminist economics. And I actually also looked at your publications list is an incredibly rich list of publications that wider has produced. And just looking at the first 300 all in 2021 is very impressive, but I could find only 16 articles or books that titles that have the term gender in it. So obviously this is some not in the sort of the mainstream. And most of the titles had to do with labor markets and wage outcomes. But, and so so wider is no different from other research organizations. Feminist economics remains marginalized as a subfield of economics, despite its importance, not only just because women, you know, are half of the population or more than half the population. And not only because there are disparities in outcomes, disparities in outcomes such as in land ownership, of course, is terribly important. But as we have seen from Venus lecture, these outcomes are inherently related to the, the workings of the economy. And, and as Bina has shown, you know, it does affect productivity. It does affect efficiency. It does affect social progress, and so on, in multiple ways. And moreover, this is a subdiscipline feminist economics that has much to offer in terms of conceptual frameworks, theories, methodology and as epistemology in general. And as Marilyn Power wrote in a seminal 2004 article, social provisioning as a starting point for feminist economics, there are perhaps five unique features that characterizes subfield that is use of well being as a measure of economic success, inclusion of ethical goals and values and as an intrinsic part of the analysis. Analysis of social, economic and political processes with power relations as a fundamental feature and interrogation of differences by race, class, ethnicity, and finally the incorporation of caring and unpaid labor as fundamental economic activities that effectively redefines the boundaries of what we mean by the economy. And I think it kind of takes economics out of this sort of pretense that economics is a science as sort of a laboratory activity where we're trying to discover truth, but that economics has to be thought of as part of a process of promoting social change for a better world. And I think, you know, being a lecture was a great illustration of all of these things. And so, you know, feminist economics has much to offer on a wide range of topics that go beyond the ownership of land and I would look forward to, you know, much more work at wider as elsewhere on gender, as a dimension in multiple areas from macroeconomics to, to other issues. So thank you very much. Thank you. Can I address a few, spend five minutes just on. Opportunity, but I just want to respond quickly to Saki because very interesting. You are right. So this is the first feminist economics and a lecture. The good way to mark a silver anniversary, but also the point that you made was absolutely right that feminist economics is still the the margins of their economics or modern economics, especially because feminist economics brings in other other disciplines, anthropology, of course, has been as work itself, and social and so on. And if modern economic is quite single discipline focused, as we know. So I think I all fairly, fairly narrow. So I think it sets a very interesting observation to and thank you for that. Binan, do you want to. Yes, yes, I'll be I'll be brief because Saki co was the thank you very much for those very complimentary words and raising a number of issues which I think are very important. But I want to first make a plug on the last point, which is, you know, this of course issues of land and gender is not only about feminist economics it's about it's central to agricultural economics. And it's central to the whole way in which we think of development in terms of the transition agrarian transitions from agriculture to industry or rural to urban. And that's where the feminization of agriculture comes in. So let's, let's accept this as a much broader terrain, which is why you find that when a field of one's own came out. I had many comments by economists who worked on land reform to say, you've opened up a pathway to a new channel for land reform. So they claimed it it wasn't just the, the feminist groups of who of course did, did claim it. I also want to mention that I, there isn't actually enough work on this. So although there's the predominant amount of feminist economics work is on, on labor markets. And the starting point of my book 1994 was that women's economic status depends centrally on the inequality in ownership of immovable property, especially land. And the, the remarkable thing is that while we have a lot of work by male economists who don't tie it on inequality which is now much heated. It doesn't provide a gender analysis, you know, stuff that I really admire in this picket is wonderful book and there's Milano which is work and so on. So I think we, we want more of this more focus on this is what I'm saying as well. Looking from 1994 onwards the long march ahead. Yes. There were two aspects. One was the legal aspect, because I pointed out in 1994, the kinds of inequalities in laws which existed and it required primary data. Not primary data required me to understand the law. So I spent months in the Supreme Court library, looking at the laws and understanding the intricacies of land laws which vary by state and religion across South Asia, five countries of South Asia. And so I had expected that we could move forward in law, but in 1994 itself I said we don't have enough land in developing economies to distribute land to everybody, and we should think of a group approach. So what I've been working now after so many decades, looking at a group approach that the kernel of that was already there in, in the last chapter of 1994. If you, if somebody wants to revisit that the issue of social norms is much discussed. And I think there are certain norms which don't change, and other norms with change so female seclusion will vanish, you know, over time with urbanization with other jobs and so on, and more and more women in public life across countries. But the marriage norms are related to ideas of incest and there are issues of taboos. Now, that doesn't mean that having them have not having those norms women shouldn't get access to land, but I'm saying it, it reduces the, the ways in which parents, at least rural parents think about a land, and where no family wants to lose their land, typically. And here what is interesting in my most recent research of 2021 paper, the results of which I shared was that even when there were sons and daughters were both there in the families where the widows inherited it the older widows did. So I asked myself, why is this the case and older men did one was that the other ones who wanted to farm, and the children wanted to leave educated children wanted to leave and find other jobs. So there's a different kind of transition, which is also taking place. So I don't expect marriage norms to change but there are other factors which, which could happen, which could reduce the, the centrality of that, which we see today. The, the third issue is that you that you talked about was that, you know, yes, the collaboration between civil society and intellectuals is very important. I've done it for, you know, most of my career. In fact, the 2005 campaign for civil society campaign for for amending the Hindu Succession Act was a big collaboration, you know, when I catalyzed it but there was a huge collaboration across India with civil society groups, and I carry my research to to civil society. So for instance, after my book came out I held workshops in India, all India workshops in regional workshops and also talk to parliamentarians in Nepal. And I did it proactively to some extent also was invited, and it led to the setting up of an of networks. So for instance, WGWLO and some of my colleagues there will be here was something that was initiated after a workshop that I did. And then writing in other forums, pamphlets, newspapers to share your research so I do that on a regular basis and, and I think that builds the bridge with policymakers as well, apart from direct interventions in policy so I think that's, that's a very important point that the impact of research depends not just on what you do and in academic journals which is very important, but that you have to take those ideas forward in other forums as well. So I'll, you raise many other questions but I will leave it at that. And there are lots of questions coming in on the chat. So Kunal with your indulgence, would you like me to pick up two or three of those that I read. I was also wondering, there are not all the questions still appeared on where you're doing it three at a time you would say so I'll pick up the first three. What am I suggesting, what am I doing if that's okay with you there are a set of questions which are not yet visible for you, which are very relevant on social norms. So actually start with the question by Nancy Falber, who's So Nancy asked a really interesting question. Let me just try and find it. So, so big question. How does the analysis of land rights fit into a larger picture of patriarchal institutions. This also relates to Sakiko's comments on power interest in both the state and the family. So how does this question of land rights between the overall analysis of patriarchal institutions. That's that's that's his question. There's also a question here, which is around the way that an observation for somebody working on Pakistan. Farid Shahid, who says that women might get rights to land, often pass those last rise of the land to sons in their own sons in the family. So effectively counterbalancing anything that might happen to actually giving women access to that. So how does one deal with that. And, and there's also a question here. From Simone, Scotty, let me read that question out to you and I can find it because there's so many questions on the chat. So the question from Simone is, are the best practice examples of legal reforms, be supplemented by interventions, designing communities awareness of women's rights to land, and women's rights to land. So are the examples of where legal reforms can be supplemented by other interventions around community awareness. And for example, your discussion civil society interventions. So let's start with this three questions. That's okay. Yeah, they're very wide ranging questions. Hi, everybody Nancy Frida. Nice to, nice to have you here. Thank you. That is one question by Sikiko I didn't take up, which is, and it depends on what patriarchal institutions were talking about but let's take the family as the center core of a patriarchal institution. Now, Sikiko, you seem to imply that if women marry within the same village and the family continues to exercise control over the land. Does it not strengthen it's because of economic reason does it not strengthen keep the family strong rather than the woman. And I think, I think it's much more complex than that. So, if you actually look at the ethnography and really be economist must read much more ethnographic evidence. You find, for instance, and I read when I was doing a field of and so on I read everything I could lay my hand on in microfiche published unpublished dissertations by doctoral students, and so on. And what you find is that if a woman is married in the same village. It makes a big difference to her to in a positive way. For instance, in her negotiations with her husband, one of the, one of the remarks I remember in this ethnography was, every time she quarrels, the husband was being interviewed every time she quarrels with me I can't say very much because she run off to her mother. Remember these are very young brides. So if you compare that to a 15 16 year old in Northwest India was married at long distances to a completely strange family. She is completely embedded in patriarchy of not one generation but remember these extended families sometimes of two or three generations within a village. And, and here what she has is that her ability to actually be within the same village enables her to negotiate better within a marital family, because she has the fallback option of a parental family. So I think if you look at the the it within the bargaining framework about which I've also written written quite a lot that you can bargain over social norms but also the within the bargaining context, it depends on what your exit options are. That will make a difference to your bargaining outcomes within the within the within the family. And this is also what you find in my in the work I did with a colleague on domestic violence. And this is actually I believe one of the first papers to look at whether women's women owning property reduced the incidence of domestic violence, and it made a huge difference. And the reason was that it reduced violence because her husband knew that she had a credible exit option, which if you only have a job, you don't because where can you go with three children in the middle of the night. So we found this both in the statistical analysis, we control for everything else that you could you could think of, and in the in the perceptions of the women, this provided a very important fallback. So this I'm saying more than patriarchal norms but if you take the village and dog me cross cousin marriage norm in practice of course village and dog me is often practice in the south but in practice cousin marriages are not anymore as much. So that that is that is declining because of the understanding of medical science and you know, and so on. So there's much more to be talked about but let me move to the other two very interesting questions. Farida you're right that I did find it, even in the field of one so that if women had land, they often. If you ask them who will, who will you give it to after you and they would say well, probably my son, rather than the daughter, we need to ask of course and you know as well as I, why is it the case because sons, according to her provide her much better support. Because of the social construct of inequalities outside the home so a son can go and work and provide an income, which a daughter may not so inequalities outside the family, which reduce women's, which, which reduce women's ability to work in the labor market for instance, will make a difference to the security that the mother feels with the son or daughter. What is interesting however is that there are some studies there's a study in an urban South India, where property is now being left to those who care for you. And so there are there are examples where there's a recognition that daughters are the ones who care for you. So I think, again, this richness of ethnography will reveal that there are cracks in this in this understanding, and where women also might be changing. Remember this, you know, this was several days ago, and today I think women are much more willing to keep the land for themselves and have, if there are daughters in the family then they might be able to cultivate it with the daughters subject to the daughters living in the same village. So I think the proximity issue remains a very important, very important one. The, the legal, I didn't quite get the third question on legal reform with other interests, Kunal. Not that it is right in front of you. I think you could see the question. Oh, yes. So best practices of legal reform being supplemented by interventions. And so I gave you examples. I know of examples in India, for instance, where you have the Macam is a Mahila Kisan, it's a platform across India. It's a network. And then there are, there are regional groups like women's group for working group for women's land ownership, who are doing work on awareness raising and who are doing work on just a sensitizing of people who actually write down the clauses. There's also been a pushback that women women signing away their shares in favor of brother should not be taken as acceptable, and that it should be subject to legal scrutiny so that's happening in India it's also happening in Pakistan I somebody just sent me an article a friend sent an article today to do that. But it seems that it's not enough, because if you look at the slide I showed you what percent of them in on land, or what proportion of total landowners of women. The proportion is very small in India, you know in this across nine states it's only on average 14%. However, the differences in states like in Telangana it's 32% shows that policymakers can make a difference if they're pushed at the highest level in terms of implementation because a lot of this implementation is being done, you know, by administration down the line to the lowest lowest level. So I'm still optimistic I was optimistic when I said a long road ahead, and I'm still optimistic that once this data comes out once we recognize where the where the obstacles are, perhaps we could move in new directions, I believe we need to move towards group approaches. And, and I think that could provide us the critical, you know, the, it would empower women. I might add, going back to the first question by Nancy and Sikiko that the group farms that I was talking about are outside the family. These women are not embedded providing unpaid labor on family farms. They actually form a group outside the family, they learn new skills, and they gain new knowledge, and they say that now other farmers, male farmers are asking us, you know, to share some of the knowledge that we've gained because we've got this training. And they, they feel that power dynamics within the family has changed. So some FAO and other you know many organizations have been pushing family farms and reform of family farms, but I feel as long as women are embedded within the family farm. It's very difficult for them to actually gain the autonomy that these other groups can, and it has not led to more conflict in the family in fact husbands are supported so if a woman is unable to join the group, she can provide substitute for, usually it's another woman, but sometimes it's also the husband, who comes in because they see it as additional supplementary income for the family. So, the two questions on tenancy Kunal by Haroon Akram Lodi and Farida. Yeah. So, first, Farida, yes, I've, as a follow up on this, I've just, I have a working paper which has just come out a couple of months ago, where I look at these households and see, does ownership of land, you know, look at male owners and female owners, and in those households where women owning on the land, I asked, well, is there a difference in productivity? And the second is, do they lease out the land? I mean, who leases out the land more? And I found that there wasn't controlling for other factors, any statistically significant difference in productivity between households where the woman was the owner and household where the man was the owner. And, but what was interesting is that women were significantly more likely to lease out the land rather than self-cultivate, and that goes to the heart of other constraints that women face. So, for instance, the constraint of inadequacy of adult labor in the home. And, and I think I believe it's so, so that is, that is extremely important. And the, and it's something that you can do in terms of state policy. The data, Haroon has talked about data, sub Saharan Africa, there have been studies, and mostly it has been on your right on women managing farms, a few studies on ownership. But you don't, that is not enough. You do need data on ownership. And in South Asia, there's very little work, even on managing farms. So for instance, there's one paper of a colleague of mine, Kanika Mahajan, who's looked at managers, but she's not looked at, been able because of the lack of data on whether ownership makes a difference to productivity. And that's what I try and do in this GDI working paper. So we do have huge journeys to travel to persuade the gender disaggregation of data, including the land digitization records, which is ongoing in India and in other countries. Thanks, Pina. I was wondering if you had any observation Nancy for risk comment on better institutions. And how do you see exactly land rights and that ownership it within the protocol to better institutions. How do you see the question Nancy's asking is what what exactly are women's land rights. How does that, how is that, how would one see that within a bigger picture of patriarchy. Is there something that you see is part of the chair position itself or do you think there are ways to to see it as independent of the chair institutions. So you have to unmute yourself. I think this is the problem. It's, it's both, you know, I mean, it's a product of patriarchal institutions and it's also. But I think that the question is how you, how you, you get at it to overturn these, these norms because, you know, inheritance do change and they they're not. I mean, I'm thinking for example in my own country in Japan where there was an overnight shift in inheritance laws. And then it's implemented that there was no objection if you know what I mean if there wasn't this kind of a huge hurdle. So I mean I think it's it's all very much contextual. And I think being explained all of that I mean all of those different kind of societal context. But but I also think that they are these, you know, economic factors that go into that dynamic. Anyway, I think I'll just leave it there. Thanks. There are a bunch of questions around. Yes, the land ownership by caste religion as a question I regained on religion, which was our mission cast in class. Would you have any response to those questions and comments. Yeah, there's some very quick responses to one or two that I've been able to read the writing is very small. Yes, in across South Asia, the laws of inheritance differ by religion and and particularly for land. So in India, the laws are different for Hindus, Christians, Parsis and Muslim communities. And because it's predominantly Hindus, so one can say that and six engines included in that the 83% any change in Hindu law benefits a very large number, but we still need reform of Muslim law which has happened in Pakistan, for instance, we still are subject to the 1937 shared that. But also there are tribal communities that regions which have not been codified so there is some way to go. The second is there was somebody asked as why there can be a why there can be a backlash or violence against women. If there's property. I, this is a question which constantly comes to me, and I say there's violence, relating to property, irrespective of whether it's women or men. So you, you have conflicts over property between brothers, and there's huge amounts of evidence on that. And in the case of the widows. I didn't, I have not come across cases where the, there was violence against widows inheriting in, but the, if there are, there could be examples. I'm not disputing that. But it doesn't seem to be a widespread phenomenon, simply that that daughters are not given the land, you know, for a start so there are other ways of preventing that. Now, what is what is interesting for me, and this is completely anecdotal that after 2005 you know I'd written an article in the Hindu because the Hindu the newspaper had asked me, can you explain to us what is the change. So I'd written this piece. And after that a lot of strange, strange people I didn't know would write to me, saying, from a Sagar while this is our family this is our family history do you think that my mother or my sister has a claim, or my wife has a claim. So that I found very interesting that men were taking an interest. And in, I usually would say that look, I am not a lawyer, but this is my interpretation of the law. In a couple of cases they wrote back saying that they had one the case in other cases they have not. So, yes, men have an interest because women have co-pastionary rights. But as you can see, it's very little property is seems to be held as co-pastionary in terms of land. And I think we need, we don't have enough data right now to see whether this varies a lot across states. We found that it was mainly in South and West India. I, I can't read all these. Yes, Kunal, did you. I think I do question that I noticed which I might be quite relevant to conclude the lecture with which is that how, how general are your arguments that legal reforms that do not trump social norms. So in other words, we have seen legal reforms in other parts of the, of the global South. So, to what extent do you think this argument that we don't seem to see legal reforms trumping social norms, carry over to say some subs on Africa. Well, I have, I didn't show the slide today I use it for my teaching all the time. And you find that it's not the case. You find huge inequalities. And you, you have huge inequalities. I think there was some 5% of in one of the Sub-Saharan African countries 5% of registered landowners were women. And similarly in Latin America. Latin America, in fact, has doesn't suffer from the same complexity of social norms that South Asia does. And at the same time, you do find huge inequalities and ownership of land. So come and dinadir has written a great deal about it. And so it's, it's, Kunal, it's much more global across the global South. And you also find very interestingly, we don't again have enough data because remember, you know, Piketty when I wrote to him and I asked him, you know, does he have gender analysis he said, he didn't have enough data on that count is that in the West, there have been attempts to assess this in the United States and UK. The gaps are much less but there you're talking about like pension incomes, you know, lifetime earnings, and but there are gender gaps there as well. And if you there it links with the issue of the labor market. So if you're not acquiring land, you know, not like acquiring property simply through the two inheritance systems but you're acquiring it through the market, then your financial status matters your ability to purchase a house or land or immovable property depends on your savings. And so there are huge inequalities of gender wage gaps and unequal earnings, then that could be that would play out also in women's accumulation of assets over time in the global North. And the, I would like to know whether some of my ideas about group ownership, how they would play out more globally. So for instance, I've been arguing not just about land but urban property suppose you have a house. And we always think of women individually can they afford it or not in most women can't. But what if six women got together and said, Okay, we're going to buy this piece of property we have six rooms and a common space, and we'll jointly own it. Is that the possibility. And that is implications. Also for the way in which we register property. It also has relates to architectural design of the you know what kinds of property are available in urban context let's say in Delhi or in Mumbai. And, or, why is it that we have so few bedsets in in apartment blocks in Delhi. For instance, so sometimes I joke and say well parents when they are when a daughter is getting married the best gift he could give the parents could give is, give her a key to a bedside. Instead of spending twice or three times as much in, you know, in the wedding ceremony, and give it to her and it's somewhere that she she has an exit option. Thank you be not unfortunately we have to bring this and lecture to a close it was out of time. So thank you for a fascinating and a lecture which really provoked so many comments the unfortunately couldn't go for all of them. But they were really really good comments from the audience. And thank you for excellent discussion comments and really providing adding your own your own interpretation your own views on exactly we should look at the question of human rights and link to the broad question of land rights. I love to thank Ruby Richardson and the comms and project team and wider for the effort they put in organizing annual lecture. And I want to thank John and team in uni.fi company that they run for a superb web platform for the lecture it's been this particular platform which we use in our annual conference earlier this year is absolutely superb. I want to thank the audience for the questions. I'm sorry, we couldn't get to all your questions, but hopefully you did a lot of insights and answers from being as a kick off to your to your many different very many questions. I want to actually end up by just a kick we mentioned about why does work on gender. We do have a major project women's work. I mean, not all the papers out on our website as yet. There's a special issue what they're looking coming out next early next year. And we also have work which I know, which I think we're not aware of looking at gender land rights in Tanzania, very different context of course, then, then India. And of course those papers that we're doing on the sniff on this particular project will come on our website at some point soon so do look out for that in the next next couple of months. I just want to end by saying that those of your newcomers to wider event I know many of you are in this kind of lecture. Please do sign up for newsletters so that you're aware of the work we're doing on on on gender but or but more broadly on on economic development social development and political development. So do the sign up for newsletters that's so we can keep in touch with what the work we're doing in many wider. And finally, I hope to see all of you in the future, you know wider event, and goodbye and thank you so much for attending this lecture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I put my email address in the chat. If anybody, you know, I know I couldn't answer your questions but I'm passionately interested in the topic so I'd be happy to try and answer some questions if you're right to me. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you Ruby and her team for organizing this and it's a great honor to deliver it today. Thank you. Thank you, Bina. Bye bye.