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Institutional reform and de facto women’s rights

Institutions & Governance Pakistan

Photo credit: Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

While governments may pass legal reforms, there is often a gap between de jure (“on the books”) legal rights and de facto practice (what is actually done). One reason for the gap is if those responsible for implementing the law do not know the details of the law. In 2015, the state of Punjab in Pakistan passed a set of legal reforms to strengthen women’s rights in marriage and divorce. These reforms included rules on the completion of the marriage contract, a legal document that governs divorce and financial rights in marriage. However, brides in particular are typically not informed of the terms of the marriage agreements they sign. Instead, the terms of the contract are often decided by the spouses’ parents, with strong influence and advice from the marriage registrar, the religious-legal official who conducts and registers the marriage. Yet until 2017 there was no education or training requirement to become a marriage registrar; indeed, the government did not have a list of the licensed registrars in the province or even know the exact number who held licenses. In 2017, the government initiated the first-ever mandatory training of all marriage registrars in the province of Punjab.

To evaluate the impact of the training, researchers collaborated with the government’s Punjab Commission on the Status of Women to randomize the rollout of the training across the province of Punjab. The results suggest the training increased registrar knowledge of basic provisions about family law and women’s rights (a 17% increase in test score), and influenced them to report that they were more likely to ensure women are aware of the terms of the contract they are signing. Researchers’ analysis of 14,000 digitized marriage contracts shows reductions in procedural violations among trained registrars, who were 50% less likely to cross out the section of a marriage contract giving the bride the right to divorce (rather than giving this option to the family to choose whether to give this right).

Building on the background work and administrative data analysis funded by EDI, the researchers are also working on a related project investigating whether the transition to a computerized biometric system of managing land transfers improves women’s access to inherited land. Between 2011 – 2014, Punjab overhauled the old, informal system for transferring land that allowed local ‘middle men’ to influence the process in ways that decreased female heirs’ access to land inheritance. The researchers are using the rollout of new land service centers to identify whether the reform improves women’s access to inherited land (by comparing the amount of land that women inherit to the amount of land that they should be inheriting by law in places with access to service centers, compared to areas still relying on local middle men).

For more information, read the working paper here, and the Impact story here.

Researchers
  • Erica Field
  • Kate Vyborny
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