Impact of Marriage and Social Norms in Determining Women’s Property Rights within the Muslim Communities of Bangladesh

The Bangladeshi Muslim society like most Islamic societies lacks advancement of women’s rights, seen in most western societies, in the context of property rights, access to land and ability to enforce their rights. Furthermore, the absence of a codified jurisdiction on marital property puts divorced and separated women in Bangladesh at far greater risk of economic hardship and poverty than the men. Considering the importance of Muslim women’s rights to access, control and own land through both inheritance and marriage, it is important to assess Bangladeshi Muslim women’s status in family, marriage, and society as a whole. With the aim to establish that women’s marital property rights would improve their overall wellbeing, this study will adopt a desk-based research in exploring the deep-rooted issues involving the construction of gender and marriage in context of Muslim women’s rights to own, access and control land in Bangladesh. In order to analyse the best approach to introduce community property regime in the Muslim society of Bangladesh, the level of development and the status of women’s property rights in six different Muslim countries, namely Tunisia, Morocco, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, and Iran, have been thoroughly analysed to demonstrate the extensive benefits of community property regimes. This nonempirical research will mostly include studying through religious scriptures, archives of libraries, online resources, published academic journals and articles, policies, and reports. Furthermore, taking a Human Rights based approach this paper will examine women’s rights and property rights as basic human rights. Essentially, this research will focus on the Muslim women and their land rights in Bangladesh in the context of marital impact, religious beliefs, and influences of long-practiced traditional social norms in order to evaluate the degree of reworking of rules and norms surrounding marriage and family would be required to facilitate joint marital property regime in the Muslim society of Bangladesh.