Karnataka Household Asset Survey

Measuring the Gender Asset Gap

Hema Swaminathan Suchitra J. Y. Rahul Lahoti

KHAS

Centre for Public Policy Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

My heart kept asking, beloved, or unloved? Even in affection there was discrimination and not only in affection. - Beloved, or Unloved?
Sarat Kumari Chaudhurani, 1891 (tr. Tista Bagchi)

Suggested Citation: Hema Swaminathan, Suchitra J. Y., Rahul Lahoti. 2011. KHAS: Measuring the Gender Asset Gap. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Centre for Public Policy Indian Institute of Management Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore 560076, Karnataka, India Ph: 91 80 26993323. Fax: 91 80 26994050 Email: genderassetgap@iimb.ernet.in Project website: http://genderassetgap.iimb.ernet.in Website: www.iimb.ernet.in

Editorial, design and layout Communication for Development and Learning 11/A, 7th Cross, 17th Main, Koramangala 6th Block Bangalore 560 095, Karnataka, India Ph: 91 80 25503481. Fax: 91 80 41478470 Email: cdlproject10@gmail.com Website: www.cdlblr.org

Karnataka Household Asset Survey

Measuring the Gender Asset Gap

KHAS

Hema Swaminathan

Suchitra J. Y. Rahul Lahoti

Funded by MDG3 Fund under the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Acknowledgements
ver the course of this study, particularly during the execution of the survey, there were occasions when we felt we had taken on a far more complex exercise than what was initially envisaged. Several individuals and organizations who worked with the project closely guided us through those periods and, have been, in small and big ways, instrumental to the success of the study. We would like to thank our funder, the MDG3 Fund under the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for supporting this project. The large comparative research project would not have been possible without their generous support. We benefited immensely from the advice and inputs of Prof. K. Srinivasan in designing the sampling and weighting methods. We would also like to thank officials from the Regional Office of the National Sample Survey Organisation, Bengaluru, for the many useful discussions on sampling methodology. Sigma Research and Consulting undertook the survey and data processing for the project. While extending our gratitude to all members of the Sigma team we would like to especially acknowledge the commitment of Jagdish Krishnappa and B. S. Manjunath to the study. The inputs of Sowmya Bhat, Shakun and T.R. Sreenivas during the enumerator training sessions were very helpful. We also thank the Department of Women and Child Development, and the Urban Affairs Advisor to the Chief Minister, Government of Karnataka, for their encouragement and support. We are grateful to the IIMB-CPP Ethics Committee for providing a comprehensive ethical review of the project in all its stages. We thank the local organizations who served as the contact point for the participants in the study districts. We also thank IIMB for their support and encouragement. The animated discussions during the project meetings were invaluable to the conceptualisation of the entire study. We would like to thank the larger project team and particularly the co-Principal Investigators, Carmen Diana Deere, Cheryl Doss, Caren Grown and Abena Oduro. Finally, we extend our deepest gratitude to all the individuals who participated in the focus group discussions and the survey for giving us their invaluable time and willingly sharing with us information about themselves and their households.

Foreword
vercoming the gender disparities that contribute to the inequalities and inequities that confront disparate societies from Asia to Africa to Latin America remains one of the most significant challenges of our times. One of the central determinants of gender inequity is posed by barriers to womens ownership, access and control over productive assets. There is a body of accumulated evidence that points to a strong positive linkage between ownership of productive assets and the well-being of individuals. For a variety of epistemological reasons, however, and despite significant work by feminist economists to counter this approach, the household rather than the individual has remained the unit of inquiry in much economic analysis. While this strategy can be effective in some contexts, yet it masks the important dynamics within the household, especially those resulting from sharp differences between men and women, and between boys and girls. Understanding the intra-household distribution of assets is even more important in a context that is characterised by huge gender disparities on social, economic, political and cultural dimensions, not only based on our understanding of how households function, but the consequences for a range of outcomes and indicators of well-being. In an environment where nationally representative surveys routinely collect asset data only at the household level, the fundamental contribution of this pioneering study is to provide a template for the collection of individual-level asset information. The data from this study is representative of Karnataka a large state with tremendous social, economic, geographic, ethnic and demographic diversity. The results of this sex-disaggregated database are interesting from two viewpoints. One, contrary to the popular belief that in the patriarchal Indian society, women do not own any assets, this data shows that women do own some assets. Two, despite this, men do own the lions share of assets a finding that some may say is neither new nor surprising. However, for the first time in India, the study has quantified what women and men own for a wide range of physical and financial assets, which has in turn, shown the extent and nature of the gender asset gap. The study also highlights how individuals acquire assets and how this links up to the existing legal framework. The latter is especially important as Indian democracy matures and liberal socio-legal inheritance regimes replace older laws that discriminated against women. These data can serve as a baseline for similar surveys in the future that can measure the impact of progressive inheritance legislation, as it evolves. Coming at a time when one of the headlines from the latest decennial census in India is the worsening child sex ratio, this survey also helps tease out the underlying social-economic structures that contribute to Indias skewed demographics. Fortunately, the study lends itself to distillation of a parsimonious set of central questions that can be incorporated into standard surveys - which can then help in tracking progress in policy initiatives promoting gender equality. One hopes, therefore, that the present survey the Karnataka Household Asset Survey 2010-11 (KHAS) will not remain khas (unique) for too long, and that others will follow quickly in its footsteps in order to strengthen the database and evidence on these critically important research and policy questions. Gita Sen Professor, Centre for Public Policy Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Table of Contents
Executive Summary Introduction Methodology Profiling the Respondents and Households Gender Asset and Wealth Gaps Assets, Rights, and Decision-making Patterns of Asset Acquisition Conclusions Notes Technical Appendix References Project Team 1 5 7 10 18 31 37 41 43 44 46 48

List of Boxes
Box 4.1: Box 4.2: Box 4.3: Box 4.4: Box 5.1: Box 5.2: Box 6.1: Legal Forms of Ownership Average Gross Value of Assets held by Men and Women Financial Assets of Respondents Profile of Individual Women Owners Focus Group Discussions: Rights Over Assets Focus Group Discussions: Decision-making Focus Group Discussions: Inheritance Practices 19 25 26 29 35 36 40

List of Tables
Table 2.1: Measuring Gender Differences in Asset Ownership Table 3.1: Distribution of Households by Type and Area (%) Table 3.2: Respondents by Characteristics and Area (%) Table 3.3: Distribution of the Primary Respondents by Religion, Caste and Area (%) Table 3.4: Incidence of Asset Ownership, Rural (%) Table 4.1: Distribution of Principal Residence, Agricultural Land, Real Estate and Non-farm Businesses by Form of Ownership and Area (%) Table 4.2: Legal Forms of Ownership for Key Assets by Area and Sex (%) Table 4.3: Distribution of Livestock, Agricultural Implements and Key Consumer Durables by Form of Ownership and Area (%) Table 4.4: Ratio of Median Gross Worth of Physical Assets by Area Table 4.5: Forms of Ownership for Financial Assets by Area (%) Table 4.6: Composition of Household Wealth by Quintile, Rural (%) Table 4.7: Composition of Household Wealth by Quintile, Urban (%) Table 4.8: Composition of Household Wealth by Quintile, Bengaluru (%) Table 4.9: Characteristics of Women who Own Assets Individually (%) Table 4.10: Asset Ownership Patterns within Households by Area Table 5.1: Decision-making Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Rural (%) Table 5.2: Decision-making Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Urban (%) Table 5.3: Mobility Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Rural (%) Table 5.4: Mobility Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Urban (%) Table 6.1: Distribution of Principal Residence Owners by Mode of Acquisition, Sex and Area (%) Table 6.2: Distribution of Agricultural Land Owners by Mode of Acquisition and Sex, Rural (%) Table 6.3: Distribution of Women Jewellery Owners by Mode of Acquisition and Area (%) 9 10 11 12 16 19 19 20 25 26 28 28 28 29 30 34 35 35 35 38 39 39

List of Figures
Figure 2.1: Map of Karnataka Indicating Districts Selected for Qualitative and Quantitative Data Collection Figure 3.1: Household Access to Amenities by Area (%) Figure 3.2: Household Asset Ownership by Area (%) Figure 3.3: Incidence of Household Consumer Durable Ownership, Rural (%) Figure 3.4: Incidence of Household Consumer Durable Ownership, Urban (%) Figure 3.5: Incidence of Household Consumer Durable Ownership, Bengaluru (%) Figure 3.6: Composition of Household Wealth, Rural (%) Figure 3.7: Composition of Household Wealth, Urban (%) Figure 3.8: Composition of Household Wealth, Bengaluru (%) Figure 4.1: Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex, Rural (%) Figure 4.2: Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex, Urban (%) Figure 4.3: Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex, Bengaluru (%) Figure 4.4: Women as a Proportion of Total Owners and their Share in Gross Worth, Rural (%) Figure 4.5: Women as a Proportion of Total Owners and their Share in Gross Worth, Urban (%) Figure 4.6: Women as a Proportion of Total Owners and their Share in Gross Worth, Bengaluru (%) Figure 4.7: Share of Gross Worth by Sex and Quintile, Rural (%) Figure 4.8: Share of Gross Worth by Sex and Quintile, Urban (%) Figure 4.9: Share of Gross Worth by Sex and Quintile, Bengaluru (%) Figure 5.1: Right to Sell Place of Residence by Respondent, Sex and Area (%) Figure 5.2: Right to Sell Agricultural Land by Respondent, Sex and Area (%) Figure 5.3: Right to Sell Jewellery by Respondent, Sex and Area (%) 7 13 13 14 15 15 16 17 17 21 22 22 23 24 24 27 27 27 32 32 33

Executive Summary
Introduction

here is a prevalent recognition that ownership, access and control over productive assets is an important determinant of the well-being of individuals and households. Assets fulfill several functions, particularly significant for poor households. In its productive capacity, an asset generates income and facilitates access to capital and credit. It also strengthens a households capacity to cope with and respond to shocks by enhancing its ability to diversify income and ease liquidity constraints. Moreover, assets compose a store of wealth which could be sold to generate income. While there is widespread agreement that womens asset ownership is important from a gender equity perspective, till date little data has been available on their access, ownership and control of assets. There are methodological and conceptual reasons why individual-level asset ownership data have not been collected. However, this lack of data is a constraint for policy makers and practitioners working towards the goal of gender equality and womens empowerment. The project, In Her Name: Measuring the Gender Asset Gap in Ecuador, Ghana and India, was initiated in 2009 by an international team of researchers to begin to address this data gap. Funded by the MDG3 Fund under the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project has collected individual-level asset data in these three countries. In this report, the key findings from the Karnataka Household Asset Survey 2010-11 (KHAS), collected by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore are presented. The main research questions that this report focuses on within the context of Karnataka, India are as follows: What are the patterns of asset ownership by men and women and what is the extent of their rights over these assets? What are the main channels of asset acquisition for men and women? What is the association between womens asset ownership and household decision-making?

Data and Methods

Qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques were used for the study. The qualitative phase was undertaken in late 2009; the quantitative survey (KHAS) was conducted in 2010-11. All four agroclimatic regions of Karnataka (Northern Plateau, Southern Plateau, Western Ghats and Coastal Areas) were covered for the study. KHAS, a state-representative survey, covered 4,110 households, of which 64 percent was rural, 27 percent was urban and 9 percent was from Bengaluru city. From the sampled households, a total of 7,185 individuals were interviewed. KHAS has several unique features. First, contrary to the norm of collecting asset information at the household-level, the data here was acquired for every individual in the household. Second, two individuals, typically one man and one woman, were interviewed in every household. A primary respondent was selected by the household members as the adult individual best aware of the households assets and economy and this person could be either a male or a female member. The secondary respondent was the spouse of the primary respondent or another household member and was selected following a set of protocols. Third, individual ownership and valuation data were collected on a spectrum of physical assets including place of residence, agricultural land, other real estate, livestock, agricultural tools and equipment, non-farm business activities and consumer durables. For the primary as well as secondary respondents, information was collected on rights over all the assets they owned, how these assets were acquired, financial assets, their knowledge of marital and inheritance regimes, participation in household decision-making, economic shocks they may have experienced and any psychological measures of well-being. Finally, the survey collected household-level information on consumption expenditure. The study has developed two sets of measures of gender inequality in asset ownership - the gender asset gap and the gender wealth gap. The gender asset gap is based on the incidence of asset ownership by individuals whereas the gender wealth gap is based on the value of these assets owned.

Gender Asset Gap Measures

1. Forms of Asset Ownership: This measure considers the distribution of an asset. An asset can be held individually by men and women or it can be held jointly in any combination by household members. Non-household members can also be co-owners of jointly held assets. Individual ownership by men was the dominant form of ownership for key productive assets residence, agricultural land and other real estate as well as for non-farm businesses and most financial assets. In rural areas, 71 percent of all plots were owned individually by men, while only 14 percent were owned by women individually. 60 percent of non-farm business activities in urban areas were owned individually by men and 22 percent of the same were individually owned by women. Ownership by all household members was the most frequently occurring form of ownership (at least 71 percent in rural areas and at least 80 percent in urban areas) for livestock, agricultural tools and equipment and certain consumer durables. Consumer durables typically used individually, like vehicles and cell phones, were not dominated by either individual or joint ownership. Jewellery was the only asset where individual ownership by women dominated individual ownership by men. Women individually owned 69 percent of all pieces of jewellery in rural areas, 66 percent of the same in urban areas and similarly, 46 percent in Bengaluru. Among financial assets, individual ownership by women was dominant for micro-finance savings.

2. Incidence Gap: This is computed for all individuals who are above 18 years of age. It reflects what percentage of the adult female population and the adult male population are owners of an asset class. One can say there is gender parity in asset ownership if on an average, the incidence of asset ownership by men is equal to the incidence of asset ownership by women. Home ownership rate of women was substantially lower than that of men. 47 percent of adult men in rural areas owned residences, while this held true for only 17 percent of adult women there. The gap was lowest in Bengaluru with 16 percent and 10 percent home ownership rate for men and women, respectively. Incidence of agricultural land ownership was even more skewed in rural areas with more than four times as many men in comparison to women owning land (39 percent of men vs. 9 percent of women). Incidence of ownership of livestock and small agricultural tools exhibited the lowest gap which was a direct result of the ownership of these assets by all household members. At least 50 percent of women in rural and urban areas owned jewellery; the incidence of jewellery ownership by men was not insignificant and was around 20 percent in both the areas.

3. Distribution Gap: In this measure, one looks at distribution of asset owners by sex enabling one to compare the proportion of male asset owners to the proportion of female asset owners. The distribution is calculated over owners of all age groups. Women were largely underrepresented among asset owners across all areas and all asset categories, except jewellery. In rural areas, less than a third of all home owners were women. This was also true for urban areas and Bengaluru at 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively. In both rural and urban areas, women accounted for less than 20 percent of all agricultural land owners and not more than 26 percent of all other real estate owners.

Womens representation among owners of livestock and agricultural tools was between 40 and 55 percent. Women constituted at least 60 percent of all jewellery owners in rural areas, urban areas and Bengaluru.

Gender Wealth Gap Measures

1. Share of Total Value of Assets by Sex: This measure examines the distribution of the total value of assets across men and women owners. The total value of assets is calculated from aggregating the current market price of all physical assets owned by households in the sample. For every rupee of total gross worth of all physical assets, only 17 paise, 18 paise and 23 paise accrued to women in Bengaluru, rural and urban areas, respectively. Womens share in total value of assets was lower than their share among asset owners for all key physical assets across all areas. Women were 20 percent of all agricultural land owners in rural areas, but only 12 percent of the total agricultural land value accrued to them. In urban areas, 26 percent of non-farm business owners were women, but they accounted for a mere 2 percent of the total value of businesses. There was a lower gender divide in the distribution of wealth for livestock and small agricultural tools.

These results suggest that not only did women own fewer assets but also those assets that they owned were of lesser value and of poorer quality. Collecting data on value of assets is thus critical to understand the full breadth of gender inequalities in asset ownership. 2. Average Gross Value by Sex of Owner: By this measure, the unit worth of the individual asset owner by sex is calculated which captures both quantity and quality of the asset in question. On an average, an individual male owner was worth more than a female owner for all key productive assets. The gap was highest for business activities with the median worth of mens activities being at least three times higher than that of womens activities. Jewellery remained the only asset, where on an average, women owned more than men.

In over 60 percent of the households, high-value assets were owned exclusively by adult men. Even for relatively low-value assets like vehicles and cell phone, between 30 and 55 percent of the households did not have any adult women owners. The gap in asset ownership between men and women widened as one moved from poorer households to richer households. Womens share of the total gross wealth among the poorest 20 percent of all rural households accounted for 51 percent and reduced to 16 percent for the richest 20 percent of households. However, it should be refrained from interpreting this finding as greater gender equality among poorer households. What it reflects, rather, is that the households in the poorest quintile were asset-poor and had a high presence of single women who at best owned some jewellery or small consumer durables. The trend of increasing gender inequality with increasing wealth calls for further data analysis.

Assets, Rights, and Decision-making

Rights over assets include alienation rights such as the right to sell and bequeath as well as use rights such as the right to collateralize and rent. This report focuses on the right to sell for a few key assets residence, agricultural land and jewellery. While ownership of the key physical assets was found to be mainly individual, the decision-making processes involved in the right to sell the assets were more consultative for men as well as women.

However, insights from the focus groups suggested that womens participation in the decision-making over assets could be more notional than real. The study also explored the association between asset ownership for women and their ability to participate in certain household decisions and to travel to public spaces autonomously. With respect to a few issues that are critical to women such as their employment, health and use of money they were not completely excluded from the decision-making process irrespective of their asset ownership status. However, in rural and urban areas, ownership of place of residence or some agricultural land was associated with more individual decision-making rights for women. Women who owned assets were also more likely to access spaces outside the home by themselves when compared to non-owners.

Mens and Womens Asset Acquisition Patterns

The chief mode of acquisition of residence and agricultural land for men was through inheritance from their natal families, while for women it was through the marital union. Acquiring through marriage could happen in two ways; inheriting the asset from a spouse usually upon his death or jointly owning the asset with the spouse who may have inherited it from his family. About 58 percent of men owners in rural areas and 49 percent in urban areas had acquired their homes through natal inheritance, while the comparable figures for women owners were a mere 13 percent and 15 percent, respectively. This difference in the case of agricultural land was starker with 85 percent of men inheriting compared to13 percent of women. Self-acquisition of agricultural land with ones own earnings was very low for men as well as women. For place of residence, the incidence of self-acquisition was higher, especially for men. In urban areas, one third of men primary respondents acquired their residences with their own earnings and credit, while the comparable figure for women was only 1 percent. A majority of women owning jewellery had acquired it as a gift at the time of marriage.

Conclusions
KHAS has provided an adaptable methodological template for individual-level asset data collection. Demonstrating that households may be asset-rich but individuals in the household could be asset-poor, it has exposed the potential drawbacks in using the household as the unit of analysis for public policy initiatives or interventions. For any policy efforts aimed at promoting womens access to assets, data at the individual level is critical to enable monitoring mechanisms. The possibilities for national-level sexdisaggregated data collection should be explored seriously. The KHAS data set has for the first time in India, provided a baseline of gendered patterns of asset ownership that is representative for an entire State. It has quantified the popular notion based on anecdotal evidence that women own little or no assets. Through a number of measures the study has firmly established that there exists substantial gender inequality in asset ownership. Women own fewer assets than men do and a smaller proportion of women are asset owners. The inequalities are higher for key productive assets and also when one considers a value-based gap as opposed to an incidence-based gap alone. Women have far fewer opportunities for asset accumulation as compared to men. Laws exist that allow daughters to inherit equally with sons. However, inheritance patterns continue to be biased in favour of men. In some aspects, even the laws do not adequately protect womens rights. For example, property acquired during marriage is not automatically co-owned by the husband and wife. The legal owner is the one in whose name the asset is held. This undermines the contributions of women to the household economy. For a large proportion of women who are home makers, there is no opportunity to acquire assets through their contributions to marital union. Labour market participation of women is not very high and typically concentrated in the informal sector which limits their opportunities for asset accumulation. Gender equality in asset ownership can only be achieved with the coalescence of several related factors - effective implementation of existing policies to increase womens asset ownership, reform of the structural conditions that constrain womens asset ownership and concerted efforts to change the deep seated socio-cultural norms that propagate the image of women as economic dependents, leading to their overall low status in society.

1. Introduction
Background

f late, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the asset ownership patterns by households due to a greater appreciation of the inter-linkages between assets, poverty, income and overall well-being. Assets are a source of livelihood as these generate income, and also facilitate access to capital and credit. These can aid income diversification which in turn strengthens the ability of households to cope with and respond to negative shocks. An asset-based approach provides a long term view to understanding poverty, since asset levels are subject to a much lesser degree of fluctuation on a day-to-day basis than income levels and thus, better reflect structural well-being. It is well established that household welfare and individual welfare do not necessarily move together, with gender being an important differentiating factor. However, research and policy initiatives have continued to focus on the household in trying to understand the interaction between assets and well-being. Current data collection practices are partly responsible for this. Routine national-level household surveys do not collect individual-level asset data, resulting in little or no information about inequity in ownership, access and control over household assets. The lack of data is a constraint for policy makers and practitioners working towards the goal of gender equality and womens empowerment. This also makes it difficult to evaluate the impact of legislative reforms, such as the impact of inheritance laws on womens property rights. There are several reasons why individual-level asset data are not collected, some of which are: Policy makers and survey designers are not yet convinced of the importance of such data for policy making The feasibility and efficacy of data collection on this topic have not yet been demonstrated There are many conceptual and methodological difficulties in obtaining valid asset ownership data that need to be resolved before questions can be incorporated into national-level household surveys.

initiated in 2009 by an international team of researchers to begin to address this data gap. With funding from the MDG3 Fund of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project has collected individual-level asset data in these three countries. Extensive qualitative research work in each country preceded the creation of the survey questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to develop comparable measures of the gender asset and gender wealth gaps across these three countries, while also ensuring that the results would help answer policy relevant questions in the local context. The surveys were fielded in 2010 -11. Nationally representative data was collected for Ecuador and Ghana and for India, data was representative for the state of Karnataka. In this report, the key findings from the Karnataka Household Asset Survey, 2010-11 (KHAS), collected by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore are presented. The main research questions that this report focuses on within the context of Karnataka are: What are the patterns of asset ownership by men and women and what is the extent of their rights over these assets? What are the main channels of asset acquisition for men and women? Is there an association between womens asset ownership and household decisionmaking?

Women and Assets

Womens ownership of and control over assets is important from a gender equity perspective. Evidence shows that an asset in the hands of women enhances individual, household, as well as community well-being. Surveys from South Asia found that the women who owned land had a greater say in household decisionmaking than women who did not own land (Agarwal, 1998; Allendorf, 2007; Mason, 1998). A few studies suggest that land ownership by women may also reduce womens experience of domestic violence (Friedemann-Snchez, 2006; ICRW, 2006; Panda & Agarwal, 2005), increase their participation in household processes (Garikipati, 2009), enhance their access to knowledge, sense of self-esteem and relative status within the household (Datta, 2006). Womens asset ownership may also increase the

The project, In Her Name: Measuring the Gender Asset Gap in Ecuador, Ghana and India was

anthropometric status of children (Duflo, 2003), the incidence of prenatal care (Beegle et al. 2001), and childrens schooling (Doss, 2006; Katz & Chamorro, 2003).

The Indian Context

National-level sex-disaggregated asset data is not available in India. However, smaller studies offer some insights into womens asset ownership patterns and largely focus on land ownership. Womens property rights, particularly their land rights, were propelled into prominence by Bina Agarwals work on gender and land in South Asia. A study in two states found that of 402 women respondents in Kerala, 36 percent owned immovable property (land or a house) while in West Bengal, 35 percent out of a sample of 450 women owned the same (ICRW, 2006). A survey of 400 households in four districts in Karnataka in 2001 reveals that women in land-owning households had access to land, but seldom had ownership rights over the same (Brown, Ananthpur, & Giovarelli, 2002). Only 5 percent of the survey respondents reported individual ownership of land by women in their households. Joint ownership of land by women was not more than 14 percent. There has been recognition at policy levels that women are disadvantaged in asset ownership and even when they do own assets, they may not have complete rights over it. The Task Force Report of the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12) noted that while almost 75 percent of all women workers are employed in agriculture (compared to 53 percent of all men workers), women do not own or have effective rights over land. Womens lack of ownership of or control over productive assets is not documented or monitored because the agricultural census does not collect sexdisaggregated asset data. The Report called for the creation of sex-disaggregated data bases to guide policy formulation and programme implementation aiming at gender-neutral and inclusive growth. The legal framework governing property rights in India is complex due to the legal pluralism that exists wherein customary laws for religious

groups and certain communities co-exist with the statutory laws. The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 follows the separation of property regime where the individual property brought to marriage by the couple is protected in the situation of a divorce. In this legal framework, the wife or the husband do not have any rights or interest over the property acquired by the spouse during marriage. This law is biased against women as property is usually held individually by men and it fails to recognise the non-monetary contribution of women to the household economy (Agnes, 2009). While Karnataka State policy provides that household land cannot be sold without the consent of female members within the household, the usefulness of this policy is debatable due to womens lack of awareness of their rights and the fact that they have no legal claim over the property (Brown, Ananthpur, & Giovarelli, 2002). The recent Hindu Succession Amendment Act, 2005 is a significant move towards gender equality with respect to inheritance rights for women. The Act addresses gender inequalities in the inheritance of agricultural land and joint family property and gives daughters (married as well as unmarried) the right of residence in their parental homes. Karnataka was one of the few states that implemented equal inheritance rights (in certain types of property) for daughters and sons as far back as in 1994. Recent studies suggest that the amendment had a positive impact on female autonomy in their marital homes (Roy, 2008) and increased womens likelihood of inheriting land and enhancing their educational attainment (Deininger, Goyal & Nagarajan, 2010). Several Central and State Government housing schemes have also made efforts to target women. Under Karnatakas subsidised state housing programmes for poor households (Ashraya Yojana and Dr. Ambedkar Housing Scheme), individual titling in womens names is mandatory. Under Indira Awas Yojana, a Central Government housing scheme, the beneficiary has to be a couple or an individual woman. The lack of systematic data on individual-level asset ownership is a serious constraint in monitoring the effectiveness of such policy interventions and the impact that this may have on womens wellbeing.

2. Methodology

he data collection for the Gender Asset Gap Study was undertaken in two phases qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative data collection was undertaken in late 2009 followed by the quantitative survey in 201011. All four agro-climatic regions of Karnataka (Northern Plateau, Southern Plateau, Western Ghats and Coastal Areas) were covered under the study.

Figure 2.1: Map of Karnataka Indicating Districts Selected for Qualitative and Quantitative Data Collection

Qualitative Data Collection

Seven districts were chosen as the place of study for the qualitative data collection. A total of 26 focus group discussions were held 10 in urban areas and 16 in rural areas, with 10 mens groups and 16 womens groups. Of the 26 groups, 12 groups exclusively consisted of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) participants. The focus group discussions centred on the themes of livelihoods, vulnerabilities and shocks, defining assets, assessing the market for assets, lifecycle analysis of asset accumulation, as well as decision-making and empowerment. The qualitative data collected fed into the quantitative survey design and helped to contextualize the data generated from the survey. Key informant interviews were held with Gram Panchayat office-bearers, school teachers, social workers and rural bank officials to understand issues around womens asset ownership and use, access to credit to aid asset acquisition and asset market operations.

Qualitative Quantitative Qualitative & Quantitative

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Survey and Questionnaire Design

KHAS is unique in its approach in that for the first time in India, information on the asset ownership of individuals, as against that of households was compiled. Two individuals within a household, typically a man and a woman were interviewed as opposed to only one person being interviewed. The survey asked for detailed ownership and valuation information of all physical assets owned by the household including principal residence, agricultural land, other real estate, livestock, agricultural tools and equipment, nonfarm businesses and their assets, and consumer durables. Data on rights and control over assets (including any income stream from the assets), and the manner of asset acquisition were collected from the respondents. The level of detailed data collected for this study is not usually found in standard household asset surveys. Additionally, there was data on the respondents financial assets, knowledge of marital and inheritance regimes, participation in household decisionmaking, experiences of any economic shocks and psychological measures of well-being. Finally, the survey collected household-level information on consumption expenditure.

Quantitative Data Collection

Sampling
KHAS is a state-representative survey with a sample of 4,110 households across eight districts.1 For the study, stratified random sampling was used with the first stratum being the four agroclimatic regions of the state. Within each region, a certain number of districts were selected randomly, largely proportional to the total number of districts in that region. The survey also included Bengaluru city in order to represent the only metropolitan area (defined as an area with a population greater than 10 lakhs) in Karnataka. With the exception of Bengaluru, each district was further stratified into urban and rural areas. The sampling framework is detailed in the Technical Appendix.

The household members were asked to identify the member best informed about the household economy and assets. This individual (male or female) was selected as the primary respondent, and did not necessarily have to be the traditional head of the household. The secondary respondent was the spouse of the primary or another household member and was selected following a set of protocols.

Gender Differentiated Patterns of Asset Ownership

The study focussed on all types of physical and financial assets in taking a gender perspective of asset ownership patterns. It did not include social, human or natural capital in the definition of assets even though an argument could be made for doing so. This is partly due to the fact that individual-level data is available for certain aspects like health and education. Consequently, much more is also known about gender differentials in these areas.

and the present value of the asset (based on the potential rental value). The respondents were asked to report the values for these transactions if they were to take place on the day of the interview. This allowed the study to examine gender gaps in asset holdings from an incidence as well as a wealth perspective. Although prone to measurement error, values are important as they take into account the additional attributes of the asset (for example, in case of agricultural land, the quality, size and location of the plot can make a big difference to its valuation) that are not normally revealed by a simple count of asset holdings. The analysis presented here is based on reported ownership (hereafter, referred to as ownership) and current market price of physical assets.

Gender Gap Measures

Two sets of measures, viz. gender asset gap and gender wealth gap have been developed to capture gender differences in asset ownership (Table 2.1). The gender asset gap was based on a count of asset holdings and was analysed in three ways: by examining i) the distribution of an asset by form of ownership, ii) incidence of asset ownership by sex and ii) the distribution of asset owners by sex. The distribution and incidence measures consider the individual to be an owner irrespective of whether she is an individual or a joint owner of an asset. Gender parity in asset ownership requires that the incidence of asset ownership be equal for adult men and adult women. The second set of measures, the gender wealth gap, was derived from asset values where the share of the total value of assets owned by women was compared to the share of the total value of assets owned by men. The average gross value of assets held by men owners and women owners were also computed. The gross value was computed as it is generally considered more reliable than the net value (which accounts for outstanding loans on the asset) due to underreporting of debt. When an asset was held jointly, the individual values were apportioned equally based on the number of joint owners within the household. Financial asset information was collected only for the respondents and not all members of the household and hence, was not included in the gap calculations for all men and women. The asset and wealth gap measures have been calculated for all categories of physical assets (principal residence, agricultural land, other real estate, livestock, small agricultural tools, big agricultural equipment, non-farm businesses and

KHAS collected two types of asset ownership information. The first type of information was based on the respondents understanding of who owned a particular asset and the respondents response to a direct question, To whom does this asset belong? The second type was based on the information obtained on ownership documents and the names of the owner/s in the documents. The documentation details were asked for the principal residence, agricultural land, and any other real estate. Thus, for key assets, the study collected information on reported ownership as well as documented ownership. Documented ownership could be critical in the event of a dispute or if the asset in question needed to be partitioned amongst its owners. Reported ownership, on the other hand, is important as it helps in understanding intra-household dynamics. If an individual believes that she is the owner of an asset (even though it may not be legally valid), it could potentially influence her behaviour and alter the relative power structures within the household. The information on transaction rights (right to sell, right to rent, right to collateralise and right to bequeath) over their assets helped in delineating the concept of ownership. It draws attention to the question of whether ownership was merely nominal or if it also implied control over assets. KHAS included a number of different measures for valuing each asset: the replacement cost (the cost of constructing a similar place of residence); the market price (if the asset were to be sold)

consumer durables). The asset categories have been further disaggregated wherever possible, to provide a more nuanced understanding of the gendered patterns of asset ownership. Table 2.1: Measuring Gender Differences in Asset Ownership Gender Asset Gap Forms of ownership of an asset: This measure considers the distribution of an asset; it can be held individually by men and women, or it can be held jointly in any combination of household members. A joint ownership category is also defined between household and non-household members. Incidence of asset ownership by sex: Adult Men Asset Owners Total Number of Adult Men ; Adult Women Asset Owners Total Number of Adult Women

This is computed for those who are above 18 years of age. It tells us what percentage of the adult female population are owners and what percentage of the adult male population are owners. Distribution of asset owners by sex: Men Asset Owners Total Asset Owners ; Women Asset Owners Total Asset Owners

This measure looks at distribution of asset owners by sex enabling us to compare the proportion of male asset owners to the proportion of female asset owners. The distribution is calculated for owners of all age groups. Gender Wealth Gap Share of total value of assets by sex: Total Value of Assets Accruing to Men Owners Total Value of Assets Total Value of Assets Accruing to Women Owners Total Value of Assets The total value of assets is calculated from aggregating the current market price of all physical assets owned by individuals in the sample. The total value is a measure of the physical gross worth as debt owed on the asset categories has not been accounted for. Average gross value by sex of owner: We compare the unit worth of the individual asset owners by sex, which captures both quantity and quality of the asset in question. For example, if the average value of land held by male owners is greater than the average value of land held by female owners, it would not only indicate that men own more plots of land but would also indicate attributes such as size of land, irrigation, soil quality and proximity to a motorable road.

3. Profiling the Respondents and Households

total of 7,185 respondents belonging to 4,110 households from eight districts of Karnataka have been interviewed for the study. This section focuses on the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents and households in rural and urban areas and in the city of Bengaluru. The characteristics include demographic variables and access to amenities and assets.

eligible secondary respondent, or if she refused, or was unavailable to participate in the survey. Table 3.1: Distribution of Households by Type and Area (%)
Households Rural Urban Bengaluru

Principal couple Other dualrespondent Singlerespondent Total number of households

68 10 22 2,628

66 11 23 1,108

50 9 40 352

Composition
The sample size of the survey was 4,110 households from Karnataka, of which 64 percent belonged to rural areas (2,628), 27 percent belonged to urban areas (1,108) and 9 percent belonged to Bengaluru city (374).2 The data collected from Bengaluru city are presented separately as these are not comparable to the data collected from other urban areas in Karnataka. With a population of approximately 5.7 million, Bengaluru accounts for 11 percent of the total population of Karnataka and is six times more populated than the second largest urban agglomeration of Hubli-Dharwad (Census 2001). As the hub of Indias IT industry, the city has grown at a very fast pace over the last decade and has attracted migrants across all classes.3 The economy of Karnataka has been growing at the rate of almost 7 percent over the last two decades. Much of this growth has been concentrated in and around Bengaluru, which had a share of 23 percent in the Net State Domestic Product in 2003 (Government of Karnataka, 2006). Asset ownership and asset accumulation patterns are thus, likely to be markedly different in Bengaluru from the rest of Karnataka, urban or rural areas. Table 3.1 presents the distribution of the sample by household type and area. Principal couple households, i.e., where the primary and secondary respondents were spouses comprised about two-thirds of the sample households in rural and urban Karnataka. Other dual-respondent households, i.e., where the primary and secondary respondents were not married, but represented other relationships (parent-child, siblings, etc.) comprised approximately 10 percent of the sample. Single-respondent households comprised about 22 percent of the sample in rural and urban areas. At 40 percent, this was higher in Bengaluru. In these households, only the primary respondent was interviewed. This occured if there was no

10

Note: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

Table 3.2 presents respondent characteristics by area. A total of 7,185 respondents were interviewed from the sampled households. 57 percent of the total respondents were primary respondents.4 About 77 percent of the primary respondents were men and 91 percent of the secondary respondents were women. There were substantial differences in the characteristics of men primary respondents and women primary respondents. Further, women who were primary respondents and women who were secondary respondents differed in terms of their characteristics. Men primary respondents were more likely to be currently married than the women primary respondents. In rural Karnataka, more than half of the women primary respondents were widowed (57 percent) and only a third of them were currently married. Women primary respondents who were widowed were just under 50 percent in urban Karnataka and the same in Bengaluru was 31 percent. This suggests that in rural and urban areas typically, women were identified as the primary respondents of the household only in the absence of a spouse. The statement is further confirmed by examining the marital status of secondary women respondents which revealed that more than 90 percent of such women respondents were currently married. A greater proportion of primary respondents in Bengaluru were women. The reasons for this are not immediately obvious. It could be due to higher female literacy rates or greater degree of awareness of household affairs among the women

Table 3.2: Respondents by Characteristics and Area (%)

Respondents Rural Men Women Men Urban Women Bengaluru Men Women

Primary respondent Average age (years) Illiterate Currently married Widowed Homemakers Wage employee Casual labour Self-employed Contributing family worker Domestic employee Total number of respondents Secondary respondent Average age (years) Illiterate Currently married Widowed Homemakers Wage employee Casual labour Self-employed Contributing family worker Domestic employee Total number of respondents

78 45.9 38 94 2 0 7 40 49 0 0 2,057 8 39.0 34 70 1 2 4 42 27 7 0 170

22 47.6 66 33 57 14 4 57 15 2 1 571 92 38.6 56 95 2 28 1 35 5 29 0 1,879

74 45.7 14 93 1 1 30 28 31 0 0 823 10 39.3 24 63 3 0 22 37 13 1 0 89

26 47.5 37 40 48 40 7 29 12 2 7 285 90 39.1 27 93 4 66 8 13 5 5 1 768

70 42.6 7 83 2 0 57 12 18 0 0 223 12 37.9 20 70 0 0 48 25 3 0 0 29

30 43.0 23 59 31 45 26 5 5 0 15 110 88 39.1 19 91 4 73 12 1 0 4 2 181

11

Note: A contributing family worker is a person employed in an establishment/economic activity operated by another household member or other family member, but without being renumerated monetarily for her services.

in Bengaluru, which led to their identification as the primary respondents. Around 90 percent of men primary respondents were either self-employed or casual labourers, of which an overwhelming majority (80 percent) were employed in agriculture. The agricultural sector continued to be the main occupation in rural areas. In urban areas including Bengaluru, wage employment in the private and public sector emerged as a key occupation for men. In rural areas, women largely worked as casual labourers in the agricultural sector. Womens labour force participation was the lowest in Bengaluru, with 45 percent of the primary respondents and 73

percent of the secondary respondents being homemakers. Working as a domestic employee in other households was a womans occupation and was more prevalent in urban areas. Table 3.3 presents the distribution of the primary respondents by their religion, caste and area. The caste and religion identities of the primary respondents were treated as representative for the household.5 The rural estimates from KHAS were largely similar to that of the National Family Health Survey 3 (NFHS-3), 2005-06. This data indicated a higher proportion of SCs and a lower proportion of STs in rural areas than what was reported by NFHS-3 (International

Table 3.3: Distribution of the Primary Respondents by Religion, Caste and Area (%)
Religion Rural Urban Bengaluru

Hindu Muslim Christian Others Caste Forward caste Backward caste Other backward caste Scheduled caste Scheduled tribe Others Unclassified

90 8 2 0 1 20 41 25 4 8 1

71 21 6 1 7 27 24 11 3 27 2

82 10 7 1 12 28 22 13 3 19 4

Note: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

12

Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) & Macro International, 2008). The lower figure of STs is probable as the districts with concentration of STs (Kodagu, Chamarajanagar and Chikkamagalur) were not among the selected districts for the KHAS study. The urban estimates of KHAS were not comparable with NFHS-3 as these have been disaggregated into the metropolitan city of Bengaluru and other urban areas in Karnataka.

Access to Amenities
The disparity in access to basic household amenities across Karnataka is evident from Figure 3.1. Rural households had poor access to sanitation (23 percent) and private piped water facilities (17 percent) and were largely dependent

on firewood for cooking (93 percent). Nearly 75 percent of such households possessed Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards and 86 percent had access to electricity through a combination of their own and the rural electrification programme, Bhagyajyoti. Urban households including those in Bengaluru enjoyed a superior standard of living when compared to those residing in rural areas. Almost three times as many as urban households (67 percent) had access to sanitation facilities in comparison to rural households. In Bengaluru, nearly all households had access to electricity. The prevalence of private piped water was also significantly higher in urban households including Bengaluru (45 percent and 72 percent, respectively for other urban areas and Bengaluru) than in rural households.

Figure 3.1: Household Access to Amenities by Area (%)

Note 1: Public improved drinking water includes public piped water, mini-water supply and borewells with hand-pumps. Note 2: Access to sanitation facilities implies that the household has access to a latrine (own, community or public) and does not have to resort to open defecation. This can be either a dry or a water flush latrine. Note 3: The difference in percentage of households with access to amenities in rural and urban areas is statistically significant for all amenities at 1 percent significance level. The difference in percentage of households between urban areas and Bengaluru is statistically significant for all amenities, except electricity, at 1 percent significance level.

13

Household Asset Ownership...

There was a sharp divide between rural and urban households in terms of the key assets owned (Figure 3.2). More than 90 percent of households in rural areas owned the house they resided in (principal residence), while the corresponding figures were 58 percent and 36 percent for urban areas and Bengaluru, respectively. The relatively low incidence of ownership of principal residence in urban Figure 3.2: Household Asset Ownership by Area (%)

areas, including Bengaluru could be driven by both an active rental market and high land value. Ownership of agricultural land, livestock, agricultural tools and equipment was expectedly higher in rural areas as the majority of respondents in these areas were employed in the agricultural sector. The household incidence of assets is largely comparable to estimates from other surveys, viz., the All India Debt and Investment Survey 3 (AIDIS-3), NFHS-3 and the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) (Table 3.4).

Note: The asset category other real estate constitutes all other immovable property besides the principal residence and agricultural land. It includes other residential buildings, commercial buildings, vacant sites and other land put to nonagricultural use.

The types of consumer durables owned in rural and urban areas and Bengaluru indicate differential economic status as well as access to infrastructure and lifestyles (Figures 3.3 to 3.5). A greater proportion of urban households including those in Bengaluru possessed laboursaving household appliances and durables that offered a certain degree of comfort such as washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves, LPG stoves and vehicles. Only 3 percent of rural households owned a refrigerator, while 10 percent owned LPG stoves. The ownership of washing machines and microwaves was negligible. Car ownership in rural areas was negligible with cycles being the main type of vehicle owned. Rural households had the lowest incidence of ownership of furniture for seating, bedding and storage (almirahs). Ownership of kerosene stoves was relatively low in rural areas reflecting the dominance of firewood as cooking fuel.

The Meaning of Assets The qualitative work explored the meaning of assets with the focus group participants. Among physical assets, the participants made a distinction between those whose values appreciate and those whose values depreciate. Consumer durables largely belonged to the latter category, while productive assets especially land, belonged to the former category. The importance of human and social capital was also emphasized as they provide the opportunity and capability to accumulate assets.

Figure 3.3: Incidence of Household Consumer Durable Ownership, Rural (%)

14

Figure 3.4: Incidence of Household Consumer Durable Ownership, Urban (%)

15

Figure 3.5: Incidence of Household Consumer Durable Ownership, Bengaluru (%)

Table 3.4: Incidence of Asset Ownership, Rural (%)

Households owning KHAS (2010-11) AIDIS-3 (2005) NFHS-3 (2006) IHDS (2005)

Principal residence Building and other construction* Agricultural land Animals Large stock Small stock Poultry Vehicles Television Cell phone

91 92 66 57 48 13 15 42 44 55

-94 69 51 45 9 10 ----

90 -61 55 ---54 38 10

96 -62 ----42 35 2

Note 1:* The AIDIS-3 dataset includes residential buildings, buildings used for farm business and buildings used for nonfarm business. This maps to place of residence and other real estate (excluding vacant site) in the KHAS dataset. Note 2: AIDIS-3 and IHDS estimates are based on the authors calculations. The NFHS-3 numbers are from the NFHS-3 Karnataka report (International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) & Macro International, 2008)

16

It is interesting to note that more households in rural and urban Karnataka had access to televisions and cell phones than they had to either sanitation or private piped water. Incidence of cell phone ownership had also increased indicating increasing affordability and the vast reach of service providers. In 2006, less than 10 percent of rural households (Table 3.4) and 41 percent of urban households in Karnataka owned cell phones (IIPS & Macro International, 2008).

...and Total Wealth

The contribution of different asset categories to total physical gross worth is indicative of the importance of the asset to an average household (Figures 3.6 to 3.8). In rural areas, wealth was concentrated in agricultural land (62 percent of total gross worth); in urban areas and Bengaluru, the principal residence gained in value (59 percent and 70 percent, respectively). Combined with other real estate, these three asset categories accounted for 85 percent of the total wealth in urban areas and more than 90 percent in rural areas and Bengaluru.

Figure 3.6: Composition of Household Wealth, Rural (%)

Figure 3.7: Composition of Household Wealth, Urban (%)

Figure 3.8: Composition of Household Wealth, Bengaluru (%)

17

4. Gender Asset and Wealth Gaps

he following section presents gendered patterns of asset ownership using different metrics for measuring the gender asset and the gender wealth gap. In a standard survey format where the household is treated as the owner, the typical approach is to use a characteristic of the head (sex, occupation, education and marital status) for a disaggregated asset analysis. However, this does not shed any light on the relative asset positions of men and women within these households. As the KHAS data asked for the owner of each household asset, the study was able to undertake a gender disaggregated analysis of asset ownership.

Forms of Ownership

18

An asset can be held individually by men or women, or jointly. The joint ownership category is further classified as being owned by the principal couple or by all household members, or other forms of joint ownership. Principal couple ownership includes those where the primary and the secondary respondents are married and own assets jointly, while other forms of joint ownership refers to any other subset of household members who own assets jointly. Examples of the latter include joint ownership by the two respondents where they are not a couple, or ownership by one of the respondents along with other household members. The study also defines a joint ownership category between household members and non-household members. The non-household members are typically migrant spouses, parents and siblings who continue to be co-owners with household members.

Individual ownership by men dominated across all areas for key productive assets -- principal residence, agricultural plots and other real estate. This was also true for non-farm businesses, particularly in urban areas (Table 4.1). In rural areas, nearly three times as many residences were owned by individual men as were owned by individual women (65 percent vs. 22 percent, respectively).The trend was similar in urban areas (58 percent for men vs. 26 percent for women) as well as Bengaluru (60 percent for men vs. 34 percent for women). At 34 percent, individual ownership by women was the highest for principal residence in Bengaluru. This rather high percentage of individual women ownership may be partially explained by tax-related concerns that prompt men to register property in their wives names. In relation to agricultural land in rural areas, the disparity between men and womens individual ownership was even higher. For agricultural land across categories, womens individual land ownership was only one-fifth of mens individual ownership. In urban areas, joint ownership with non-household members (17 percent) was the second highest form of ownership for agricultural land. This likely reflects the fact that urban residents have agricultural property in rural areas that are co-owned with other family members. This was also the pattern for other real estate in urban areas with 15 percent jointly owned with non-household members. Womens individual ownership of non-farm businesses was at 25 percent in rural areas and 22 percent in urban areas. This could be possibly linked to the presence of microfinance programmes that promote income-generating activities.

Table 4.1: Distribution of Principal Residence, Agricultural Land, Real Estate and Non-farm Businesses by Form of Ownership and Area (%)
Ownership by household members only Joint ownership between household and nonhousehold members

Asset categories

Individual men

Individual women

Principal couple

All household members

Other joint ownership

Total

Total no. of the asset

Rural Principal residence Agricultural land Marginal Small Semi-medium Medium & large Other real estate Non-farm businesses Urban Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Non-farm businesses Bengaluru Principal residence

65 71 67 74 75 73 68 48 58 64 63 60 60

22 14 18 13 10 11 20 25 26 15 19 22 34

4 2 3 1 2 2 5 12 5 0 1 6 2

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1

3 4 4 3 4 9 3 12 2 3 1 9 1

5 8 9 8 8 5 5 1 8 17 15 3 2

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

2,398 2,468 1,041 635 421 371 647 464 676 302 236 387 128

19

Note: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

Box 4.1: Legal Forms of Ownership Table 4.2: Legal Forms of Ownership for Key Assets by Area and Sex (%)
Asset categories Ownership by household members only Individual men Individual women Joint ownership between household and nonhousehold members Total no. of the asset

Rural Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Urban Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Bengaluru Principal residence

42 51 57 49 56 51 47

22 15 18 19 12 23 28

33 33 23 30 28 24 24

2,238 2,328 576 642 275 226 117

The gender gap in legal ownership followed a similar pattern to that found in reported ownership. Across the three key assets and for all areas, property documents were more likely to have mens names. Property documents that households typically reported having were khata6 and tax receipts. For agricultural land, the Record of Tenancy and Crops (RTC) was also frequently mentioned as being held. Documents signifying conveyance of property such as sale deed, partition deed and will constituted a much lower share in property documents. What was striking was the high percentage of non-household members who had their names on the ownership documents. Around 50 percent of these were actually the deceased ancestors of the current owners. The qualitative research provided some insights into this result. High transaction costs associated with getting names changed on ownership documents and inability to transfer assets into their names due to conflict with other family members were a few of the reasons given by our participants. Many reported that for ancestral residences and agricultural lands, they operated on a notional division of the properties and did not feel the need to have ownership documents in their names.

The most common form of joint ownership across rural and urban areas was by all household members for livestock, agricultural tools and implements and most low-valued consumer durables (Table 4.3).7 This form of ownership reflects both usage patterns of the asset within the household as well as the value of the asset. It is difficult to attribute ownership to items that are of low-value or that are used and accessed by all members (small agricultural tools, for example). Those which are more typically used exclusively by individuals cell phones and vehicles had greater individual ownership, although

ownership by all household members was not insignificant. Moreover, it was surprising that in rural areas, large stock (cattle and buffaloes) and large agricultural equipment were more likely to be owned by all members of the household (86 percent and 71 percent, respectively) as opposed to being individually held (8 percent for large stock and 12 percent for large equipment). Only in the case of jewellery, individual ownership by women dominated across all areas (46 percent in Bengaluru, 66 percent in urban and 69 percent in rural areas).

Table 4.3: Distribution of Livestock, Agricultural Implements and Key Consumer Durables by Form of Ownership and Area (%)
Ownership by household members only Asset categories Individual Individual men women Principal couple Joint ownership between household and nonhousehold members

All household Other joint members ownership

Total

Total no. of the asset

Rural

20

Livestock Large stock Small stock Poultry Small agricultural tools Large agricultural equipment Jewellery Vehicles Cell phone Urban Livestock Large stock Small stock Poultry Small agricultural tools Jewellery Vehicles Cell phone Bengaluru Jewellery Vehicles Cell phone

6 5 5 7 5

5 3 2 10 3

6 6 6 7 8

82 86 84 75 83

1 1 1 0 0

1 1 1 0 1

100 100 100 100 100

8,275 3,928 2,072 2,275 21,251

10

71

100

577

4 46 51 5 7 0 6 6

69 9 8 6 3 5 11 4

8 2 4 1 2 1 0 4

16 39 34 84 82 95 80 82

3 1 1 0 0 0 0 1

0 2 1 4 6 0 3 2

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

2,285 1,374 1,829 672 227 139 299 2,401

8 53 52 2 53 49

66 12 20 46 12 24

9 5 4 8 2 3

15 25 22 42 32 23

1 2 0 1 1 1

1 4 1 0 1 0

100 100 100 100 100 100

929 868 1,211 150 239 508

Note: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

The other measures of gender inequality; incidence, distribution and wealth gaps for the asset categories directly follow from how an asset is owned, either individually or jointly. The gaps are low where ownership by all household members is high.8 For assets that are primarily individually owned, the gaps are higher because men are more likely to be individual owners in comparison to women.

biased towards men across all asset categories, excepting jewellery. The incidence of home (principal residence) ownership by individuals across Karnataka reflects the same pattern as the incidence by households lowest in Bengaluru (16 percent for men and 10 percent for women) and highest in rural areas (47 percent for men and 17 percent for women). Across all areas, the rate of home ownership by women was substantially lower than the rate of home ownership by men. Land is an important asset in rural areas and it was seen that more than four times as many men as women owned land (39 percent for men vs. 9 percent for women). More men and women in urban areas owned non-farm business activities. In rural areas, women were more likely to be working as casual labourers or contributing family workers and men were involved in agricultural activities. In Bengaluru, women were more likely to be homemakers while men were wage-employed. The incidence of ownership of livestock and small agricultural tools for men and women exhibited the lowest gap which was a direct result of these assets being owned by all household members.

Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex

The incidence of asset ownership gives the percentage of the total adult population who are owners of a given asset class. An individual is counted as an owner for assets owned by her individually or jointly (Figures 4.1 to 4.3). Conceptually, it is the same as the householdlevel incidence of asset ownership except that the unit of analysis is now the individual and not the household. One can say there is gender parity in asset ownership if on an average, the incidence of asset ownership by men is equal to the incidence of asset ownership by women. By applying this measure, it was found that the gender gap was

21

Figure 4.1: Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex, Rural (%)

Figure 4.2: Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex, Urban (%)

22

Figure 4.3: Incidence of Asset Ownership by Sex, Bengaluru (%)

Distribution of Asset Owners and Wealth by Sex

Comparing the distribution of asset owners and the distribution of gross physical wealth by sex underscores the point that a simple count of assets held by men and women does not reveal the full extent of gender disparities in asset ownership (Figures 4.4 to 4.6). The distribution-based measure of asset ownership shows the share of men owners and the share of women owners as a percentage of total owners of an asset. The distribution of wealth looks at the share of total value of physical assets held by women vis-a-vis the share of total value of physical assets held by men.9 Women were largely underrepresented among asset owners across all areas. In rural areas, less than a third of all home owners were women.

While this improved marginally in urban areas, the disparity was still stark women were 34 percent of all home owners in urban Karnataka and 38 percent of the same in Bengaluru. It is worth noting that womens share in total gross worth of homes was lower than their representation among total owners. This implies that not only were there fewer women home owners, but also what they owned was likely to be smaller and of lower value (for instance, in undesirable location or of lower grade of construction). In Bengaluru, women accounted for 38 percent of all principal residence owners, but their share of total wealth was a mere 10 percent. The disconnect between proportion of women owners and their share of wealth was reinforced when one considered agricultural land, a critical asset in rural areas. Twenty percent of all agricultural land owners were women, but the value accruing to them accounted for only 12 percent of the total agricultural land value.

Figure 4.4: Women as a Proportion of Total Owners and their Share in Gross Worth, Rural (%)

23

Figure 4.5: Women as a Proportion of Total Owners and their Share in Gross Worth, Urban (%)

24

Figure 4.6: Women as a Proportion of Total Owners and their Share in Gross Worth, Bengaluru (%)

The importance of looking at a wealth-based measure in addition to an incidence-based one is dramatically illustrated by the case of non-farm businesses. In urban Karnataka, 26 percent of non-farm business owners were women, but they accounted for a mere 2 percent of the total value of businesses. This could be explained by the fact that womens businesses were largely informal, small-scale and required minimal capital investment. They were likely to be engaged in home-based activities such as tailoring, dairying and small shops attached to their residence. Men were involved in a wider range of business activities including provision stores, retail shops, contracting for various building

construction activities, large-scale cattle and sheep rearing, quarrying, driving and automobile service stations which were potentially more remunerative. There was a lower gender divide in the distribution of both owners and wealth for livestock and small agricultural tools. This was not surprising as these assets were considered as belonging to all household members. For every rupee of total gross physical worth, only 17 paise, 18 paise and 23 paise accrued to women in Bengaluru, rural areas and urban areas, respectively.

Box 4.2: Average Gross Value of Assets held by Men and Women The median worth of physical assets held by men and women also reflects the inequality in wealth distribution. It shows that on an average, an individual male owner was worth more than a female owner for all key productive assets (Table 4.4). The gap was highest for business activities with the median worth of mens activities being at least three times as high as womens activities. Jewellery remained the only asset where on an average, women owned more than men did. Table 4.4: Ratio of Median Gross Worth of Physical Assets by Area
Asset categories Rural Urban Bengaluru

25

Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Livestock Large stock Small stock Poultry Non-farm businesses Large agricultural equipment Jewellery Vehicles Cell phone

1.18 1.33 1.67 1.05 1.07 1.00 1.00 3.00 1.11 0.54 1.80 1.60

1.50 1.25 2.00 0.88 0.93 1.00 1.00 3.60 1.31 0.63 1.64 2.00

2.0 ------4.0 -1.0 1.0 1.5

Note: The ratio is defined as the median worth of men owners divided by the median worth of women owners. There are substantial differences between the mean and median values due to concentration of wealth in the higher end of the distribution. Hence, the median values are reported which present a more appropriate picture of the average population.

Box 4.3: Financial Assets of Respondents Financial asset information was collected only for respondents and not for all household members. Therefore, it is not reported for all men and women as it would under estimate the ownership of financial assets. Individual ownership of financial assets accounted for more than 90 percent; there was very little or no incidence of joint ownership in any category (Table 4.5). With the exception of informal savings (microfinance, cooperative and NGO savings), men individually held a greater percentage or share of formal saving instruments including insurances in their names. The reach of the informal savings was dominated by the microfinance sector which had a good penetration among women. Table 4.5: Forms of Ownership for Financial Assets by Area (%)
Rural Asset categories Urban Bengaluru Individual Individual Total Individual Individual Total Individual Individual Total men women no. of men women no. of men women no. of the the the asset asset asset

Bank account Other formal+ Microfinance/ Cooperative/ NGO savings

62 56 7 60 64 61 53

36 39 91 39 31 37 45

1,519 210 1,035 3,242 950 12 7,109

62 67 11 57 62 68 56

34 29 88 41 32 28 41

740 245 308 1,336 482 106 3,216

59 66 2 59 67 43 59

38 34 98 40 30 57 39

235 58 35 417 126 271 883

26

Cash at hand Insurance Other financial assets Any financial assets

Note 1: Only the major forms of ownership are presented. Note 2: +Includes post office, provident funds and pensions.

Gender Disparities by Household Economic Status

An advantage of collecting asset values is that it enables the calculation of total gross worth of households or individuals. This is useful as assets are a product of accumulated income and provide insights into standard of living and often serve as

a proxy for economic status. In order to examine if there was any relationship between economic status and gender disparities in asset ownership, the gender wealth gap was compared for households of varying economic circumstances. The total physical gross worth of households was used to rank and classify them into quintiles to enable a comparison of the gender wealth gap across quintiles (Figures 4.7 to 4.9).

Figure 4.7: Share of Gross Worth by Sex and Quintile, Rural (%)

Figure 4.8: Share of Gross Worth by Sex and Quintile, Urban (%)

27

Figure 4.9: Share of Gross Worth by Sex and Quintile, Bengaluru (%)

Table 4.6: Composition of Household Wealth by Quintile, Rural (%) Asset categories Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Livestock Non-farm businesses Consumer durables Jewellery Q1 52 7 4 10 2 7 17 Q2 57 22 4 6 2 2 6 Q3 45 37 5 5 1 1 5 Q4 41 46 4 3 1 1 4 Q5 17 71 5 1 1 0 2

Table 4.7: Composition of Household Wealth by Quintile, Urban (%) Asset categories Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Livestock Non-farm businesses Consumer durables Jewellery Q1 0 0 1 1 6 52 40 Q2 17 3 3 1 9 21 45 Q3 56 7 6 1 5 5 19 Q4 69 10 6 0 5 2 7 Q5 50 21 14 0 9 1 5

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Table 4.8: Composition of Household Wealth by Quintile, Bengaluru (%) Asset categories Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Non-farm businesses Consumer durables Jewellery Q1 0 0 0 3 77 21 Q2 0 0 0 4 50 46 Q3 2 5 1 6 23 61 Q4 50 6 3 8 4 29 Q5 83 5 7 1 0 4

In the poorest quintile (bottom 20 percent), womens share of total worth dominated in urban areas (60 percent) and was approximately equal in rural areas and Bengaluru (51 percent and 50 percent, respectively). Thereafter, their share showed a secular decline moving from poorer to richer households irrespective of area. In the richest quintile (top 20 percent), womens share of wealth was lowest in rural areas at 15 percent and highest in Bengaluru at 23 percent. The gender gap patterns can be potentially explained by the household structure, asset composition and how these assets were owned (Tables 4.6 to 4.8). The poorest households in urban areas were asset-poor and they did not own any productive assets. More than 90 percent of their wealth was concentrated in consumer durables and jewellery. This was true for the bottom 60 percent in Bengaluru as well. Since consumer durables and jewellery were largely owned by all household

members or by women alone, their share of total worth was equal to or greater than mens share. Agricultural land continues to be the most highly valued asset in rural areas, yet it contributed to only 7 percent of wealth of the poorest households. While this suggests high landlessness among these households, it also contributed to a low gender wealth gap as this asset was dominated by individual male ownership. It was seen that the wealth of these households was concentrated in the principal residence (52 percent) followed by jewellery (17 percent) and livestock (10 percent). While ownership of residence by individual men dominated for richer households, this was not the case for the poorest households. Both men and women were equally likely to be sole owners of the home -about 38 percent by women alone and 37 percent by men alone. The relatively high proportion of individual women owners could be linked to the fact that they were likely to be primary respondents (84 percent), widowed (59 percent)

and residing in households that did not have any adult men (61 percent). In the richest households (top 20 percent) across the areas, residence, land and other forms of real estate constituted at least 85 percent of all wealth. Box 4.4: Profile of Individual Women Owners

An analysis of the forms of ownership revealed that these assets tended to be owned exclusively by men. Consequently, womens share of total wealth was very low, ranging between 16 percent in rural and urban areas and 23 percent in Bengaluru.

As has been seen, individual ownership by men dominated all major assets. However, women also owned assets individually, not only small and low-value items, but also key assets such as agricultural land and residence. Table 4.9 below provides a snapshot of these women owners across three asset categories. The profiles of these women were similar for principle residence and agricultural land, but differed markedly for non-farm business owners. Women who individually owned agricultural land or principal residence were likely to be primary respondents, widowed with an average age of above 50 years. They were also more likely to be illiterate in rural areas. In urban areas, 60 percent of women owners were not engaged in any remunerative activities. In rural areas, majority of them were casual labourers or home makers and slightly more than a third of them lived in households that did not have an adult male member. This could be explained by their marital status or by the fact that adult men in the household had migrated. In contrast, individual women owners of non-farm businesses could be either primary or secondary respondents and were likely to be currently married. They tended to be better educated and younger than women owners of residence or land. Table 4.9: Characteristics of Women who Own Assets Individually (%) Principal residence Rural Marital status Widowed Currently married Never married Occupation Self-employed Casual labour Non-remunerative activities Education Illiterate Primary Higher primary Secondary Higher secondary Graduate Respondents Primary Secondary Average age (years) No adult men in household Total number of owners 72 10 51 40 526 73 9 56 34 176 63 11 53 31 353 35 41 38 16 111 43 43 42 15 80 71 9 10 4 1 0 45 12 24 13 1 2 68 9 11 4 2 0 31 12 17 23 12 1 22 14 16 21 19 5 12 51 35 10 23 60 22 37 39 72 14 10 81 7 10 68 26 0 74 19 4 72 26 0 24 59 13 30 60 7 Urban Agricultural land Rural Non-farm businesses Rural Urban

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Table 4.10: Asset Ownership Patterns within Households by Area (%)

Rural Asset categories Only adult women Only adult men No. of households Only adult women Urban Only adult men No. of households Bengaluru Only Only adult adult women men No. of households

Principal residence Agricultural land Other real estate Non-farm businesses Vehicles Cell phone

24 16 22 24 7 6

70 79 72 55 45 46

2,111 1,555 536 389 1,052 1,394

29 15 22 21 9 8

64 79 75 66 54 39

598 198 180 319 545 743

35 --11 6 9

61 --83 52 32

109 --64 163 271

Note: For other real estate and non-farm businesses, the numbers for Bengaluru were too small for disaggregation.

Intra-household Gap
The gender measures of asset ownership discussed so far are based on the population of men and women without any reference to intra-household ownership patterns. The household, however, constitutes an important space as inequalities within it have the maximum impact on individuals and their lives. The study calculated a simple measure of intrahousehold inequality to examine the distribution of assets within the household. Households owning a particular asset were categorised as those households where that asset was owned exclusively by adult men or by adult women (Table 4.10). These exclusive categories included both individual and joint ownership by either sex. This classification was done only for those households that owned the asset in question and comprised of at least one adult man and one adult woman. Across areas, in over 60 percent of the households, high-value assets (place of residence, agricultural land and other real estate) were owned exclusively by adult men. This means that in these households, women did not have any ownership claims on these assets. Such skewed ownership patterns were also seen in non-farm business ownership. This pattern was particularly high for Bengaluru and is partly explained by the low labour force participation rates of

30

women in the city. Even for certain relatively low-value assets such as cell phones and vehicles, mixedsex ownership (at least one adult man and adult woman as owners) was less than 50 percent in rural areas.10 Ownership only by men within the household continued to be the norm; but this seems lower for cell phones in urban and Bengaluru. Presumably, it is considered a household-level consumer durable. This relatively simple measure highlights the flaws in using only the household as the unit of analysis for any policy initiative or intervention. For instance, all 1,555 households in rural areas would be classified as owning land, but only 21 percent of these would have women as owners. In contrast, 84 percent of the households would have men as the owners. The picture that emerges from the analysis of the gender asset and gender wealth gaps is that women considerably lag behind men in asset ownership. For key assets, women are much less likely than men to be owners. Their share of gross wealth is also low since they own fewer assets which are likely to be of inferior quality and thus, of less value. This disparity holds across the economic spectrum. In absolute terms, women in richer households are certainly better off than women in poorer households. However, the inequalities between men and women are also much higher in richer households.

5. Assets, Rights, and Decision-making

n order to unpack the concept of asset ownership and how it plays out for individuals, KHAS collected information on a set of transaction rights on the assets owned by the primary and the secondary respondents as well as their participation in household decisionmaking processes. The analyses presented here are descriptive in nature and consider the correlation between asset ownership, rights, and decision-making. Thus, it cannot be inferred that asset ownership has a negative or a positive impact on these variables, as other factors that may affect these have not been taken into account.

composition. As discussed previously, these women were largely widows. Thus, it is possible that there may not be other adult members in the household to consult or there may be adult members who were less likely to be consulted than a spouse. On the other hand, women owners who were secondary respondents and largely currently married reported that their right to sell was consultative in nature. A similar pattern was found with respect to rights over agricultural land (Figure 5.2), which showed that decision-making was consultative in nature. For both place of residence as well as agricultural land, owners who reported that they had no rights over the assets owned by them were less than 10 percent. However, marginally more women as compared to men reported not having the right to sell the asset that they owned - which could indicate their relatively lower status in the household. As seen earlier, womens individual ownership dominated the asset category of jewellery. However, the right to sell jewellery was also mainly a consultative process (Figure 5.3). This shows that notwithstanding the type of asset in question and its form of ownership, when individuals were married, the rights that they exercised over their assets were more consultative. Although whom they consulted has not been analysed here, the presence of a spouse seemed to make decisions over asset transactions more participatory for men and women. Observations from field work and qualitative research suggest that the participatory process implied by these findings could be more notional than real. On occasions, the spouse or other household members were merely informed that a particular decision had been made with little or no consultation around the decision-making process. Women participants in focus groups mentioned that discussions about sale of an asset involved their participation, but often the final decision was made by men. This was also reinforced in focus groups with men participants who stated that decisions concerning assets were mostly in the male domain. (Box 5.1, page 34).

Rights
Two sets of transaction rights can be defined for the key assets the right to alienate (which includes the rights to sell and bequeath the asset), and the right to use (which includes the rights to rent and collateralize the asset). This section looks at the right to sell for principal residence, agricultural land and jewellery for men as well as women owners in rural and urban areas.11 Residence and land were chosen due to their primacy in overall wealth while rights over jewellery were examined due to its dominance in womens wealth. Wherever possible, the results have been classified by primary and secondary respondent categories. Rights have been categorized into independent (right to sell individually), consultative (right to sell with permission or in consultation) and no rights (not having the right to sell). It was noted earlier that residences were mainly owned individually by men. However, the analysis of the rights over principal residences showed that the right to sell was largely consultative in nature, particularly where men were the primary respondents (Figure 5.1). Less than a quarter of men owners (17 percent in rural and 21 percent in urban areas) reported that their right to sell the residence was absolute. Interestingly, primary women owners reported greater independent rights than primary men owners (42 percent in rural and 41 percent in urban areas). This could reflect their marital status and household

31

Figure 5.1: Right to Sell Place of Residence by Respondent, Sex and Area (%)

32

Figure 5.2: Right to Sell Agricultural Land by Respondent, Sex and Area (%)

Figure 5.3: Right to Sell Jewellery by Respondent, Sex and Area (%)

33
Decision-making
The study also examined the correlation between asset ownership and key decisions, and the mobility patterns for currently married women respondents. The household decisions included decisions about womens labour force participation, their autonomy to use their earnings as well as their decision about accessing health services for themselves. Physical mobility as indicated by womens ability to access public spaces such as the market, health centre and other areas outside the home is considered potentially important from several perspectives. First, it could influence their ability to access health care for themselves and their children. Second, it could impact their control over income if they do not have the opportunity to market their own produce. Third, in patrilocal and patriarchal societies, womens ability to visit their natal home is critical as this could be an important source of social capital for them. Finally, lack of or constrained freedom of movement for women is not conducive to building their awareness and exposure to new ideas. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 show that irrespective of their asset ownership, most women were not excluded from the process of decision-making in issues that concerned them. Interestingly, in both rural and urban areas, women who owned either a dwelling or some agricultural land exhibited more individual decision-making rights as compared to women who owned neither. The qualitative data suggests that the participatory processes in household decision-making were stronger and less nominal than what emerged in the case of rights over assets (Box 5.2, page 36).

Box 5.1: Focus Group Discussions: Rights Over Assets Shimoga District, Urban, Women Participants Excerpt 1 Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: If you want to sell or buy land, who decides that? Both of us (husband and wife) sit and discuss this. Who decides if the rent you are getting on your property needs to be increased? Both of us decide. Whose say has greater weight in making these decisions? It depends on both of us. If you disagree with his decision, will he still go ahead? He will still go ahead and inform me about this later.

Chamarajanagar District, Urban, Women Participants Excerpt 2 Moderator: Participant 1: Who decides about purchasing or selling land? Is it by both husband and wife or only one of them? If the property is in the name of only the husband, he can sell it any time. Will the women be asked in that case? We tell them to decide according to their wish. If a wife does not want her husband to sell the property, then what happens? Then they dont listen to us and decide on their own.

34

Moderator: Participant 2: Moderator: Participant 1:

Bellary District, Rural, Men Participants Excerpt 3 Moderator: Participant 1: Participant 2: Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 2: Who decides about buying anything for the house, husband or wife? Both. Usually men. What if the women disagree? Men dont listen to them, they will do it anyway. So whose decision is final? Mens decision is final. Suppose a land has to be sold, who takes the main decision? The man. Because he is the one who brings in loan and credit. Besides, women dont know about these things.

Table 5.1: Decision-making Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Rural (%)
Decide Decide with Not alone someone involved Own either principal residence or agricultural land Decide alone Decide with someone Not involved

Decisions

Do not own either principal residence or agricultural land

Whether to be employed or pursue an income generating activity How to spend the money earned* Accessing health services for self
Note 1:* Conditional on earning an income.

28 29 29

71 69 71

2 2 1

11 10 14

85 84 85

3 5 1

Note 2: Differences in proportions between asset owners and non-asset owners are significant at 1%. Note 3: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

Table 5.2: Decision-making Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Urban (%)
Decide alone Decide with someone Not involved Decide alone Decide with someone Not involved

Decisions

Own either principal residence or agricultural land

Do not own either principal residence or agricultural land

Whether to be employed or pursue an income generating activity How to spend the money earned* Accessing health services for self

26

74

21

73

60 32

40 66

0 2

35 21

64 78

1 1

Note 1:* Conditional on earning an income. Note 2: Differences in proportions between asset owners and non-asset owners are significant at 1%.

Table 5.3: Mobility Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Rural (%)
Alone Allowed to go to Only with someone Not at all Alone Only with someone Not at all

Own either principal residence or agricultural land

Do not own either principal residence or agricultural land

35

Market Health centre Natal home Other place outside village, community, area

72 63 72 59

21 37 25 38

7 1 3 4

56 49 60 49

28 50 38 45

16 1 2 6

Note 1: Differences in proportions between asset owners and non-asset owners are significant at 1%. Note 2: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

Table 5.4: Mobility Patterns of Currently Married Women by Asset Ownership, Urban (%)
Alone Allowed to go to Only with someone Not at all Alone Only with someone Not at all

Own either principal residence or agricultural land

Do not own either principal residence or agricultural land

Market Health centre Natal home Other place outside village, community, area

82 72 83

10 28 16

8 0 0

72 61 68

19 39 30

9 0 2

71

29

59

39

Note 1: Differences in proportions between asset owners and non-asset owners are significant at 1%. Note 2: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of figures.

Box 5.2: Focus Group Discussions: Decision-making Bengaluru City, Men Participants Excerpt 1 Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: Participant 2: Do women have control over money that they earn? Yes. Can they use it as they wish? Yes. Nobody will question them.

Shimoga District, Urban, Women Participants Excerpt 2 Moderator: Participant 1: If you have some money in the bank, do you need your husbands permission to withdraw and spend it? If I have saved it myself, I need not ask my husband; if it is given by my husband, then I ask. The latter were also more likely to go alone as compared to the former (73 percent vs. 56 percent). It was found that for both household decisions and physical mobility, irrespective of asset ownership, women in urban areas exhibited greater individual decision-making power. This was likely an outcome of their better educational attainments and greater exposure, which was an offshoot of their urban residence.

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Examining the asset ownership and mobility patterns of women showed that those who owned assets were also more likely to access spaces outside the home by themselves when compared to non-owners (Tables 5.3 and 5.4). This was particularly striking when it came to the question of going to the market in rural areas. The proportion of women not being allowed at all declined from 16 percent for women with no assets to 7 percent for asset owning women.

6. Patterns of Asset Acquisition

HAS recorded different channels of asset acquisition - including participation in the asset market, inheritance, marriage, gifts and transfers, and government programmes. A robust empirical characterisation of these modes of asset acquisition is central to ameliorating the gender inequities in asset ownership. The data on acquisition channels points to the necessity of engaging with multiple strategies for policy intervention. Inequities in certain modes of acquisition like asset market participation can only be addressed as a part of the larger programmes and policies that target womens education and labour market participation. Other modes like inheritance might need legislative reforms, in addition to initiatives that help generate awareness of the gender equality provisions in existing laws. KHAS collected information on how assets owned by the primary and secondary respondents were acquired by them. Although this data was collected for all assets, the analysis here has focused on principal residence, agricultural land and jewellery.12 Natal inheritance was the main channel by which men owners acquired their residence (58 percent and 49 percent in rural and urban areas, respectively, Table 6.1). For women owners, however, acquisition through natal inheritance was very low (13 percent in rural areas and 15 percent in urban areas). The main channel by which women acquired their residence was through marriage. This happened in two ways; either by inheriting it from their spouse usually upon his death (spousal inheritance) or jointly owning the asset with their spouse who may have inherited it from his family (marital inheritance). The distribution between these two channels

for women owners was somewhat similar in urban areas (25 percent as marital inheritance and 28 percent as spousal inheritance), though it was relatively more skewed towards spousal inheritance in rural areas (26 percent spousal inheritance vs. 18 percent marital inheritance). This high incidence of spousal inheritance for women corroborates the earlier finding that women individual owners were mainly widowed (68 percent and 74 percent in rural and urban areas, respectively), and a majority were primary respondents (72 percent and 73 percent in rural and urban areas, respectively). The study makes a distinction between spousal and marital inheritance because if a woman inherits the house following the death of her husband, she would have a legal right to it either as the widow of a coparcener13 or as a Class I heir.14 However, for currently married women, if the asset in which she is a co-owner is inherited from her spouses family, the actual inheritance would be to her spouse. She would have no automatic legal rights over it, unless a change is made to include her as a legal owner.15 In urban areas, self-acquisition was also an important mode for men, but less so for women. Forty percent of men owners purchased their residence with their own earnings or by taking a loan as compared to only 7 percent of women owners. In rural areas, this was at 25 percent for men and 11 percent for women. Current government housing programmes are more geared to rural areas and mandate that the houses have to be registered in the womans name. This is reflected in the data with marginally more rural women reporting that they had acquired their house through government housing programmes as compared to men.

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Table 6.1: Distribution of Principal Residence Owners by Mode of Acquisition, Sex and Area (%)
Primary respondents Modes of acquisition Men Rural Women Men Urban Women

Natal inheritance By marriage Marital inheritance Inherited upon death of spouse Self-acquisition Purchased with own earnings Purchased with loan Purchased with own earnings and loan Purchased with spouses earnings Purchased with own and spouses earnings Others* Government housing scheme

58 1 1 0 28 9 5 11 0 2 1 10 4 1,638

13 44 18 26 26 4 4 3 2 5 8 12 5 410

49 2 2 0 44 14 7 19 1 1 2 2 3 410

15 53 25 28 25 0 6 1 6 5 7 3 4 125

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Others Total number of owners

Note 1: Totals need not add upto 100% due to rounding of numbers.

Note 2:* Others include purchases with other members earnings in combination with the earnings of the respondent, or the respondents spouse.

With regard to agricultural land in rural areas (Table 6.2), natal inheritance dominated mens acquisition (85 percent), while women were again disadvantaged. Only 13 percent of primary respondent women owners and 16 percent of secondary respondent women owners were recipients of natal inheritance. Also noteworthy was the difference between these two categories of women owners in how they acquired land

through marriage. Primary respondent women were more likely to inherit land from their spouse (44 percent) while secondary respondents were more likely to acquire land through marital inheritance (41 percent). Across the type of respondents and sex, participation in agricultural land markets was very low. This emphasizes the primacy of inheritance as a key channel.

Table 6.2: Distribution of Agricultural Land Owners by Mode of Acquisition and Sex, Rural (%)
Modes of acquisition Primary respondent Men Women Secondary respondent Women

Natal inheritance By marriage Marital inheritance Inherited upon death of spouse Self-acquisition Purchased with own earnings Purchased with own earnings and loan Purchased with spouses earnings Purchased with own and spouses earnings Others Government scheme Others * Total number of owners

85 1 1 0 9 3 3 0 0 1 2 3 1,766

13 69 25 44 8 2 1 1 2 2 3 7 242

16 46 41 5 16 2 0 4 6 4 4 18 176

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Note1: The numbers of secondary male respondents are too small for disaggregation. Note 2:* Others include gifts, encroachment and community adjudication.

The modes of acquisition for jewellery were quite different from what was observed for residence or for agricultural land (Table 6.3). The primary mode of acquisition of jewellery for women was through gifts received at the time of their marriage. This reflects the practice of dowry during marriage when a woman receives cash, jewellery, consumer durables and other assets from her natal family. It was also seen

that women participated in the jewellery market, although there were some differences between the primary and secondary respondents. The former purchased jewellery much more with their own earnings, while the latter were more dependent on their spouses earnings. These patterns were similar across rural and urban areas.

Table 6.3: Distribution of Women Jewellery Owners by Mode of Acquisition and Area (%)
Women owning jewellery Modes of acquisition Primary Rural Secondary Primary Urban Secondary

Purchased with own earnings Purchased with spouses earnings Gift at time of marriage Gift not at time of marriage Others Total number of owners

36 8 36 7 13 325

16 18 54 5 7 1,230

29 20 34 8 9 161

9 30 48 7 6 478

Note: Others include purchases with credit, purchases with other members earnings in combination with the earnings of the respondent, or the respondents spouse.

Box 6.1: Focus Group Discussions: Inheritance Practices Findings from the qualitative data indicate that while there was awareness of the changes in the inheritance legislations to entitle daughters and sons equally in family property, prevailing social and cultural norms continued to act as barriers to womens natal inheritance. Bellary District, Rural, Men Participants Excerpt 1 Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: Moderator: Participant 1: When a girl gets property, is it through her husbands family or her parents family? It is mostly from her husbands family. From the parents family, women get only jewellery. What about house and land? Dont women get those from their parents? If parents dont have sons, then they will give their house and land to their daughters. If they have sons, they will give these only to their sons. So do women get such parental property only if they dont have brothers? Yes.

Shimoga District, Urban, Women Participants

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Excerpt 2 Moderator: Participant 1: Is there any difference in giving property to sons and daughters? Though the law says that it should be equally divided between the sons and daughters, nobody generally follows that. In some families, they will have assets as well as liabilities. So if daughters ask for their share in the property, parents ask them to take on the liabilities too. Then the daughters dont want it as they will be answerable to their husbands. Our brothers tell us that they have spent a lot of money and incurred debts on our weddings and so, they dont have to give us any property. There is a girl whose parents are very rich. She is fighting for her legal share in her parents property. But her brothers have stopped talking to her now. If we seek our share, we lose our dignity and the security of our maternal home. If we go according to the law, we will ruin our relationships. Is such a law needed then? For some people, it may be good. If a brother shares parental property with his sister voluntarily, it is good. But it is not good for a woman to take it by force. women are denied the right to natal inheritance. This, in combination with low levels of education and labour force participation, limits womens avenues for asset accumulation by themselves.

Participant 2: Participant 3:

Participant 4: Moderator: Participant 4:

KHAS brings the structural factors that underlie differing modes through which men and women acquire assets into sharp focus. An analysis of these factors suggests that within the confines of a largely patriarchal and patrilineal society,

7. Conclusions
You cannot have a democracy, of course, if you cut off a large chunk of humanity, fifty percent or thereabouts of the people, and put them in a separate class apart in regard to social privileges and the like. They are bound to rebel, and rightly rebel against that... - Jawaharlal Nehru, Speech in Parliament debating the Hindu Code Bill, May 5, 1955.

he KHAS data set for the first time in India provides a baseline of gendered patterns of asset ownership that is representative for a specific State. In addition to agricultural land and place of residence, the study has considered the entire range of physical assets. The gender asset and wealth gaps have been measured using several metrics, each uncovering different facets of the issue. The conclusive finding, using any metric, is that women are subordinate to men with respect to asset ownership. The inequality is highest for principal residence and agricultural land and lowest for livestock, agricultural tools and equipment and certain forms of consumer durables which are predominantly owned by all members of the household. Jewellery shows a reverse gender gap with ownership biased in favour of women. Asset incidence data is more frequently collected by household surveys for obvious reasons of ease of collection and greater accuracy when compared to asset value data. However, KHAS has shown that value-based inequalities are greater than inequalities based only on asset incidence. Given this, the choice of whether or not to collect valuation data in addition to incidence data should be guided by the context within which the data will be used. While detailed asset surveys should certainly collect both types of asset data, multi-purpose household surveys could collect only incidence data. The results from the study suggest that gender disparities exist across the economic spectrum and actually increase from the poorest to the richest strata of society. In the richest 20 percent of rural households, women own only 16 percent of total wealth whereas in the poorest 20 percent, they own 51 percent of total wealth. This apparent gender equality among the poorer households is explained by the fact that they are asset-poor and dominated by single women who at best, own some jewellery or small consumer durables. Moreover, if their place of residence is state

provided, it would also promote gender equality. The trend of increasing gender inequality with increasing wealth calls for further analysis of the data for explanations. This is not entirely surprising as economic growth by itself cannot transform societal values. It is hoped that the study will bury several misconceptions. First, it is often argued that it is impossible to collect individual-level asset ownership information. The reason for this has often been cultural; that most assets are held by the household head and it is difficult to attribute ownership to individual members. KHAS has provided a methodological template for individual-level asset data collection. It has demonstrated that not only is such data collection feasible, but is also crucial for policy initiatives. The analysis presented here provides incontrovertible evidence that individuals and households cannot be equated. Even when a household is asset-rich, individuals within the household especially women can be assetpoor; hence the need for individual-level data. Second, there are opinions about womens asset ownership that are primarily based on anecdotal evidence. In some circles, there is conviction that women do not own any assets, and certainly not high-valued ones. There is also a less extreme view that suggests that while women may own some assets, there is bound to be a high level of inequality between men and women. Based on a rigorous quantitative study, the findings here show that women do in fact own assets across the spectrum and there are substantial levels of inequality by sex. Such a quantification of the problem, its scope and severity is needed to effectively guide policy initiatives and programme implementation. The opportunities for asset accumulation are varied for men and women. Inheritance, employment, access to institutional credit and government programmes are the main

41

channels by which individuals acquire assets. These channels are found to be generally biased against women as they are mediated by social and cultural norms that promote the concept of women as being economically dependent on men. The study findings also suggest that womens asset accumulation is largely mediated through the marital union. They inherit from their husbands as widows or co-own property with their husbands. However, for property acquired during marriage, there may not be any automatic legal co-ownership of the asset. For example, under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the concept of joint matrimonial property is not legally recognised. This disadvantages women as it does not recognise their contributions to the household economy and to the building of matrimonial assets. Further, since womens workforce participation is low and tends to be concentrated in the informal sector, the opportunity to accumulate assets through earnings is currently not a viable option for them. Hence, the law governing assets acquired during the marital union certainly needs to be debated in the light of recognising womens contributions as economic contributions and for providing them with greater economic security. A first step is also to build awareness of these laws among men as well as women.

Women are also not likely to inherit from their natal families. It is far more common for men to do so. This holds true even though Karnataka modified its legislations as far back as in 1994 to allow daughters to command equal inheritance rights as sons for certain property types. Legislations aimed at promoting womens asset ownership do not operate in a gender-neutral social milieu. Hence, unless an effort is made to address the entrenched patriarchal attitudes among men and women, gender progressive laws are unlikely to make an impact and become effective. For the few women who do inherit from their families, understanding the circumstances under which they do so is important as it is a critical channel of asset accumulation. KHAS provides an extremely rich and unique dataset for researchers and policy makers interested in addressing gender inequality. Further analysis can be undertaken on questions relating to determinants and impact of gender asset disparities; impact of progressive changes in inheritance laws; effectiveness of government schemes in promoting womens ownership of assets; and providing a template for a minimal set of questions to be included in household surveys to collect information on gender asset and gender wealth gaps.

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Notes
1 In the sample, the current Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts have been considered as a single unit, while Gulburga includes Yadgir district as well. Due to poor response rates in the higher economic strata in Bengaluru, it was decided to exclude the primary sampling units where less than 10 households were interviewed, resulting in a final sample of 352 households for the city. The Census 2011 provisional figures place Bengaluru Urban district population at 9.5 million, of which Bengaluru citys population is likely to be about 8 million. All descriptive statistics are weighted using appropriate sample weights. There were very few cases where the religion or caste of the household members differed from that of the primary respondent. The survey elicited the name of the caste to which each individual member belonged. Based on this, the castes were coded using three lists the Central List of Other Backward Classes for Karnataka State (http:// www.ncbc.nic.in/backward-classes/karnataka. html), the Karnataka List of Backward Classes (http://www.backwardclasses.kar.nic.in) and the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes list (http://sw.kar.nic.in/scstlist.pdf). Wherever a certain caste name appeared in both the OBC and the BC lists, it was coded under the former since that supersedes the latter. Hindu households which did not fall in any of these lists were coded as Forward Caste and non-Hindu households which did not fall in any of these lists were coded as Others. Khata is the account of a person owning immovable property in a given locality. It consists of all the details of the property such as name of the owner, location and size, and all other details that are useful in filing property tax. 7 Most consumer durables such as television, iron box, radio, vessels were reported as being owned by all household members and are not listed in the table. For assets that are jointly owned (including being owned by all household members), each individual is considered an asset owner for the calculation of the incidence and distribution measures. Therefore, for most assets, the number of asset owners will be different than the number of assets. The calculation of owners is based on household members and only the value of the assets accruing to household members is taken into consideration while calculating total wealth. All values have been checked for outlying observations.

4 5

10 Mixed-sex ownership can be calculated as 100 (only adult women + only adult men). 11 The number of observations was not sufficient in Bengaluru city to undertake this analysis. 12 These are presented only for rural and urban Karnataka as the sample of owners for Bengaluru is not large enough for a disaggregation. 13 A coparcener in Hindu Inheritance Laws is an individual, who, upon birth within four generations, becomes one of the owners of a familys joint family property. Upon the death of a coparcener, the widow/widower is entitled to the deceased individuals share in this property. 14 Upon the death of an individual intestate, the Hindu succession laws identify a set of close relatives of the deceased as Class I heirs to her or his self-acquired property. The Class I heirs include the widow/widower, children and mother of the deceased. 15 This discussion pertains to Hindu personal laws.

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Technical Appendix
Sampling
n each district, two taluks were selected by means of the Population Proportionate to Size (PPS) method. Within each taluk, four villages above, and four villages below the median population were selected for the study using the same method. Depending on the size of the village, a household enumeration exercise in the entire village (or in some parts of it) was undertaken, from which the final sample of households was randomly selected. The towns in each district were divided into two strata those with over 1 lakh population and those with less than 1 lakh population; one town in each stratum was selected randomly. The electoral booths in the towns were used as the Primary Sampling Unit (PSU). From among all the booths in a town, four were randomly selected for the survey. Within the four electoral booths, the selection of the households for survey followed exactly the same method as mentioned above in the rural area sampling. Rural and urban sampling was with reference to Census 2001 figures. The Bengaluru Metropolitan Regions formed the first strata for the survey. Within each region, wards were randomly selected. This was proportional to the total number of wards in the region, so as to select a total of 12 wards across Bengaluru. In each ward, two electoral booths were selected randomly. The final sample of households was once again randomly selected.

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Respondent Selection
Two adult individuals (over 18 years of age) were interviewed from a household as the primary respondent and the secondary respondent. The primary respondent was identified by the household members as the person who was most knowledgeable about the economic circumstances of the household. If the primary respondent was married, then her or his spouse was selected as the secondary respondent. If the primary respondent was unmarried, then an adult member of the opposite sex was selected as the secondary respondent. The effort was to interview a male and a female member of the household. However, this was not always possible when all the adult members of a household were of the same sex. Knowledge about household assets was used as a filter in the choice of the secondary respondent when he/she was not a spouse of the primary respondent.

Questionnaire Design
The final questionnaire comprised of three components - a primary respondent questionnaire, a secondary respondent questionnaire and a household-level consumption questionnaire. The primary respondent questionnaire comprised of a household-level asset listing section and an individual section. The secondary respondent was administered only the individual section. The household-level section collected an inventory of all physical assets and their ownership and valuation details. In addition to collecting other information, the individual section followed up on the assets owned by the respondents. The design of the asset section drew upon the sample questionnaires for individual asset data collection developed by Doss, Grown, and Deere (2008). The consumption section was adapted from the India Human Development Survey, 2005.

Fieldwork and Survey Execution

Field work was undertaken by a team comprising of approximately 60 members. They were divided into teams of eight members each one supervisor, six data enumerators and a data-scrutiny person. The length of each interview was approximately 1.5 hours. The actual survey was preceded by four rounds of field-testing of the instrument, six weeks of training of team members, and a pilot survey of

100 households across three districts. Around 7,900 person days were spent in planning and executing the survey. The interview protocols and informed consent forms were reviewed by the IIMB-CPP Institutional Ethics Committee. The field team was given rigorous training in the administration of the informed consent form. Written signatures attesting their consent were required of all the participants. As far as possible, male respondents were interviewed by male interviewers and female respondents were interviewed by female interviewers. Issues of privacy and confidentiality were emphasized during training and field work. The project collaborated with local organisations in every district to serve as a focal point for the participants who wanted further information about the study, or who wanted to discuss their experiences of participating in the survey. Given the sensitive nature of the topic, participant refusal was of concern, particularly among the highincome groups. It was somewhat difficult to gain access to households residing in gated communities. Thus, it is likely that KHAS is not representative of the highest income groups in Karnataka.

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References
Agarwal, B. (1998). Widows vs. Daughters or Widows as Daughters? Property, Land and Economic Security in Rural India. In M. Chen (Ed.), Widows in India: Social Neglect and Public Action (pp. 12469). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Agnes, F. (2009). Conjugality, Property, Morality and Maintenance. Economic and Political Weekly, October, xLIV (44), 58-64. Allendorf, K. (2007). Do Womens Land Rights Promote Empowerment and Child Health in Nepal? World Development, 35(11), 1975-88. Beegle, K., Frankenberg, E., & Thomas, D. (2001). Bargaining Power within Couples and Use of Prenatal and Delivery Care in Indonesia. Studies in Family Planning, 32(2), 130-146. Brown, J., Ananthpur, K., & Giovarelli, R. (2002). Womens Access and Rights to Land in Karnataka. RDI Reports on Foreign Aid and Development, (114). Census 2001. (2001). Government of India. Retrieved April 10, 2011 from http://www.censusindia. gov.in/towns/krn_towns.pdf Datta, N. (2006). Joint Titling a Win-Win Policy? Gender and Property Rights in Urban Informal Settlements in Chandigarh, India. Feminist Economics, 12(1), 271-298. Deininger, K., Goyal, A., & Nagarajan, H. (2010). Inheritance Law Reform and Womens Access to Capital: Evidence from Indias Hindu Succession Act. World Bank Policy Research Working Papers, 5338(June). World Bank. Retrieved May 17, 2011, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers. cfm?abstract_id=1625154. Doss, C. (2006). The Effects of Intrahousehold Property Ownership on Expenditure Patterns in Ghana. Journal of African Economies, 15(1), 149-180. Doss, C., Grown, C., & Deere, C.D. (2008). Gender and Asset Ownership: A Guide to Collecting Individual-level Data. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. WPS4704. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Duflo, E. (2003). Grandmothers and Granddaughters: Old-Age Pensions and Intrahousehold Allocation in South Africa. The World Bank Economic Review, 17(1), 1-25. Friedemann-Snchez, G. (2006). Assets in Intrahousehold Bargaining among Women Workers in Colombias Cut-Flower Industry. Feminist Economics, 12(1&2), 247-69. Garikipati, S. (2009). Landless but not assetless: female agricultural labour on the road to better status, evidence from India. Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(3), 517-545. Government of Karnataka. (2006). Karnataka Human Development Report 2005. Information Systems. ICRW. (2006). Property Ownership and Inheritance Rights of Women for Social Protection the South Asia Experience. A Synthesis Report of Three Studies. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Macro International. (2008). National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), India, 2005-06: Karnataka.

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Katz, E., & Chamorro, J. S. (2003). Gender, Land Rights and the Household Economy in Rural Nicaragua and Honduras. Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Economics Association. Puebla, Mexico. Mason, K. (1998). Wives Economic Decision-Making Power in the Family: Five Asian Countries. In K Mason (Ed.), The Changing Family in Comparative Perspective: Asia and the United States (pp. 105-33). Honolulu: East-West Center. Panda, P., & Agarwal, B. (2005). Marital Violence, Human Development, and Womens Property Status in India. World Development, 33(5), 823-50. Roy, S. (2008). Female Empowerment through Inheritance Rights: Evidence from India. Second Riccardo Faini Doctoral Conference on Development Economics, University of Mialn. Italy. Retrieved May 17, 2011, from http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/PDF/Outputs/IIG/iig-riccardpconference-roy.pdf.

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Project Team
Centre for Public Policy
Hema Swaminathan Manita Rao Nageena Sultana Narasimha Raja H. M. Rahul Lahoti Ramakrishna T. R. Shankarappa B. S. Shanthala S. Shreekanth Mahendiran Suchitra J. Y. Uma G. T. Nagesh K. C. Narayan Datta Arundhekar Naveen M. E. Pavan Kumar Rajeshwari Rudrappa B. R. Rudresha P. R. Rukmini K. A. Shadakshari S. Shantha B. Chalawadi Shivavva C. Talabal Somayajulu U. V. S. Sridevi S. Barker Srinatha N. Srinivasan K. S. Sujatha T. Bendigeri Sunil Kumar P. T. Suvarna S. Mamani Udaya Kumar G. Vageesh N. Veena K. Venkatesh T. Venkatesh S. J. Vidyavati Patil Vijayalaxmi B. Savanth

48

Sigma
Adiveppa Y. Jakkannavar Basamma V. Basavaraj S. Bharadwaj S. V. S. R. K Chidananda N. R. Dwarakish K. R. Gnaneshwar S. Gopal H. Kadival Hajira Sulthana Hema J. Amblimath M. S. Hiremat Jagadish M. G. Jagdish Krishnappa Jayashree A. Gasatti Kiran S. J. Lalitha G. Baddannavar Laxmavva S. Thumbal Madhu Sudhan A. Mahantesh M. Bandari Manjunath B. M. Manjunath T. Shivappa

Local Organisations
Mahatma Gandhi Rural Development and Social Change Trust, Shimoga Mahila Samakhya, Mysore, Gulbarga, Gadag, Bidar Prajna Counseling Centre, Mangalore Rural Education for Development Society, Tumkur Vimochana, Bengaluru

Asset ownership is crucial to an individuals social, economic and political well-being. Womens asset ownership is recognised as important, but there is little data on their access, ownership and control of assets. In an attempt to address this data gap, the Karnataka Household Asset Survey (KHAS) 2010-11 has collected individual-level asset data from a state-representative sample of over 4,000 households across Karnataka. Funded by the MDG3 Fund under the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KHAS is the Indian component of a larger multi-country project aiming to measure the gender asset gap in Ecuador, Ghana and India. This report shows that there is substantial bias against women in asset ownership, which is in part due to limited opportunities available to them for asset acquisition. The KHAS dataset serves as a baseline for similar studies in the future which will help monitor the impact of policies and legislations aimed at redressing gender inequalities in asset ownership.

Centre for Public Policy (CPP) INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT BANGALORE (IIMB)
Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore - 560076, Karnataka, India Ph: 91 80 26993323. Fax: 91 80 26994050 Email: genderassetgap@iimb.ernet.in Project website: http://genderassetgap.iimb.ernet.in website: www.iimb.ernet.in