Christina Sarah Hauser, is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Economics of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her research focuses on development economics, more precisely on gender and education.
Context
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region scores lowest worldwide on most measures of gender equality (WEF, 2023). While social norms play an important role, some forms of gender discrimination are still written in law: most MENA countries continue to apply Islamic inheritance law, which systematically favors sons over daughters. The Qur’an and the Sunna lie out precise rules for the allocation of a deceased individual’s wealth among their designated heirs: a son will always receive double the share of a daughter. The survival of other family members may decrease the size of the bequest, which is allocated to the deceased’s children, but it does not affect the gender-discriminatory split among them. Daughters’ smaller inheritance share is justified by the fact that Islamic law obliges a husband to provide shelter, clothing, food and medical care to his wife (Sait and Lim, 2008). The changing social reality in the MENA region increasingly questions the validity of this argument: the literature has shown that property ownership can function as an insurance against misfortunes and increase women’s bargaining power in the household (Allendorf, 2007). Furthermore, the persistence of Islamic inheritance law has been criticized for increasing women’s vulnerability and hindering them from participating in the economy (IFC, 2017). Legal reform, however, is difficult, and presumably even more so when the law is of religious origin.
Tunisia is known as the regional frontrunner in terms of women’s rights. The country abolished repudiation and polygamy back in 1956 and legalized abortion in 1973 – earlier than many European countries. Since 2018, a large social movement has demanded the introduction of a gender equal inheritance law. A reform proposal backed by then-President Essebsi, who however died in office. The proposal never reached a parliamentary vote. Given the continuing institutional and economic crisis, gender equality in inheritance has disappeared from the Tunisian political agenda. Granting women equal rights to inheritance may not be the only way of alleviating gender discrimination in inheritance, though: the Tunisian civil code allows parents to make gifts: they can favor their daughter(s) by transferring a property title, land or other assets to them while alive. Upon their death, the remaining wealth will then be split according to Islamic inheritance law. The Tunisian law 69 of October 28, 2006, even creates a fiscal benefit for gifting one’s children. If done pre-mortem, gifting one’s daughter could thus attenuate the gender discrimination prescribed by the current law.
Research question & Hypotheses
Can parents be incentivized to use gifting in order to create a more gender equal bequest allocation privately? My research leverages gifting, an existing alternative to reforming national law, as part of a survey experiment. I hypothesized that informing people about the possibility to gift one’s daughter would raise the salience of gender issues and thus increase their support for women’s right to inheritance. It may conversely decrease their support for inheritance law reform if gifting is perceived as a substitute for legal reform. Given the absence of public opinion data on the issue, I conjectured that respondents were likely to misperceive others’ support for gender equal inheritance law. The belief that others disapprove of gender equality in inheritance may decrease individual support for the policy. This would be in line with Bursztyn et al. (2020) who show that the belief that others disapprove of women working outside the home decreases female labor market participation in Saudi Arabia. To the best of my knowledge, my study is the first to assess public support for gender equal inheritance and the potential existence of a tradeoff between introducing gender equal law and gifting one’s daughter in a context where Islamic inheritance law continues to be applied.
Experimental Design
I test these hypotheses within a survey experiment which was conducted via phone in Tunisia in spring 2023, reaching a sample of 1,505 adults from across the country. Respondents were randomly allocated to two treatment arms and the control group in equal shares. The first treatment provided information on gifting one’s daughter as an alternative way of attaining a more gender equal inheritance split, and the fiscal benefits associated to it. The second treatment corrected respondents’ beliefs about public support for legal reform before providing the same information on gifting. I measured the impact of these treatments on respondents’ gender attitudes: the bequest split they would choose among their children in a hypothetical scenario, support for legal reform, and willingness to use gifting to achieve a more gender equal inheritance split. Moreover, I collected extensive data on the current use of gifting in Tunisia.
Descriptive Results
Only about one in three Tunisian adults is favorable to the introduction of a gender equal inheritance law. By contrast, approval of gifting one’s daughter is high. Two in three respondents stated that they would be willing to gift their daughter to achieve a more gender equal split. The descriptive data confirms that gifting is not only socially accepted but also widespread: 27 percent of Tunisian adults have received a gift themselves, are married to someone who has received a gift, or have made a gift to their daughter. Older, more educated and wealthy individuals are significantly more likely to favor gifting over legal reform. By contrast, women are significantly more likely to endorse legal reform. This seems intuitive: in practice, women rarely make gifts and so far, they are also less likely to receive gifts than men.
Treatment Effects
Informing respondents about gifting appears to have a positive impact on their gender attitudes. Respondents in the first treatment arm are significantly more likely to favor a gender equal bequest. I find that 60 percent of respondents underestimate public support for inheritance law reform. Respondents who underestimate reform support are also less likely to support reform themselves. Yet, in contrast to Burszytn et al. (2020) correcting these misperceptions does not significantly change respondents’ gender attitudes. Instead, those respondents who held accurate beliefs are the ones who display large treatment effects – and significantly reduce their support for legal reform. I argue that respondents’ underlying characteristics are most likely to be driving this finding. Respondents who underestimate public support for reform tend to endorse more conservative attitudes overall. Similarly, in the US, several studies have found that conservative individuals are less susceptible to informational treatments (Alesina et al. 2018, Settele 2022). An analogous mechanism may be at play here: conservative respondents are less likely to respond to treatment as they hold strong political convictions at baseline.
Conclusions
My research shows that gifting one’s daughter represents a private alternative to the introduction of a gender equal inheritance law – but mostly for a wealthy subsample of the population. Tunisians clearly underestimate their peers’ support for reforming the national law. Using a survey experiment, I show that this misperception is unlikely to be the binding constraint for national reform, though. Policy interventions aiming to decrease gender discrimination in the transmission of wealth should target the political moderates whose gender attitudes are malleable. The final decision regarding family wealth transmission is likely to remain in the hands of the traditionally male head of the household, though. Men tend to hold more conservative gender norms than women, and gifts to sons and male relatives are also common. These findings imply that gifting is unlikely to be a sustainable solution to gender discrimination in inheritance at a larger scale. As younger generations reach voting age, the question of gender discrimination in inheritance will become even more urgent in Tunisia and the larger MENA region. Future research should therefore investigate alternative ways of raising awareness about women’s rights and strengthening women’s access to property.
Interview with the author
Q: How did you come up with this research question?
I was working in Tunisia in 2018 when the movement for gender equality in inheritance took the streets of the capital. My environment was very progressive, and I was convinced the proposal would pass. The failure to vote on this bill left me puzzled. When I applied for my PhD, it was one of the policy issues I discussed in my cover letter. In the second year of my PhD, I ran a first survey, which allowed me to gain a better understanding of public opinion on this issue. Based on these results and a lot of qualitative work, I designed the larger survey experiment.
Q: How did you go from idea to implementation?
That’s a great question. In the beginning of the project, I did a lot of qualitative work: I seized every opportunity to discuss the question with people from different backgrounds and disciplines. Feminists naturally have more subject knowledge, but their views may not be representative of the larger population. Try to get as much input as possible and always consult a diversity of people. That’s one lesson learned!
Funding is very difficult to get by as a PhD student. What really helped me was running a first small survey and then applying for more funds. Showing some preliminary results will strengthen your funding application. My project unfortunately did not fit most calls for grants but I managed to put together several small grants from different sources.
Q: Do you have advice for researchers interested in implementing an information intervention as you did?
Piloting is essential. Your respondents may not understand the questions the way you thought about them when you wrote them. Beyond the regular pilots, I extensively tried out the survey questions and informational treatments on friends and colleagues, which allowed me to improve them and get a better understanding of what they are actually measuring. My favorite example: one survey item, which was meant to assess religious conservatism, asked respondents whether they agreed that banks should be banned from charging interest. When I asked a friend about it, I was surprised to find out that he strongly agreed – even though I knew he was not religious. This made me realize that people may agree with this statement for religious reasons, but also for political reasons: many Tunisians think that banks charge excessively high interest rates exploiting private citizens. This survey item indeed turned out to be quite noisy – and luckily, I know why.
References
Alesina, A., Stantcheva, S. and Teso, E. (2018c). Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution, American Economic Review 108(2): 521–54.
Allendorf, K. (2007). Do Women’s Land Rights Promote Empowerment and Child Health in Nepal?, World Development 35(11): 1975–1988.
Bursztyn, L., González, A. L. and Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2020). Misperceived Social Norms: Women Working Outside the Home in Saudi Arabia, American Economic Review 110(10): 2997–3029.
IFC (2017). MSEME Finance Gap. Assessment of the Shortfalls and Opportunities in Financing Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Emerging Markets.
Sait, S. and Lim, H. (2008). Land, Law and Islam: Property and Human Rights in the Muslim World, Bloomsbury Publishing.
Settele, S. (2022). How Do Beliefs about the Gender Wage Gap Affect the Demand for Public Policy?, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 14(2): 475–508.
World Economic Forum (2023). Global Gender Gap Report, Insight Report.
Photo Credit: C. Battilana, 2018
