An Experiment Testing How Pakistani Women Are Deprived of Their Inheritance

• In Event: Experiments in South Asian Politics

Abstract

Law and social norms often go in sync: the law picks up and sanctions behaviour that had already been the social norm; the legal rule over time translates into a social norm that is followed as such, maybe even without knowing that the desired behaviour is also mandated by law. In other instances, legal rules and social norms have different domains. For instance, many social situations can be modeled as (prisoners’) dilemmata. For some of them, e.g. in the environmental domain, the law steps in and requires the socially desirable behaviour. For others, the law leaves it to local communities to find a solution, for instance when forming the proverbial English cue at the bus station. But there are situations where the law adopts one solution, and the social norm another. A classic illustration is a legal rule that empowers a hitherto disfavoured group, while those privileged by the social norm try to maintain it regardless.

We exploit the fact that in predominantly Muslim Pakistan it is customary to deny females their share in property despite clear Sharia laws and inheritance rules. For example, upon the death of their fathers, daughters are made to forego their share in property to their brother by way of “gift”. Were they to go to court, daughters would receive the share stipulated in the Sharia. This is well known in the population. Yet there is strong social pressure not to exercise this right. If a daughter were to sue, she would risk being shunned by her family. It is reported that daughters next to never receive anything (Jawad 1998, Nelson 2011, Siddique 2013). Social norms are said to override the law.

With the help of a laboratory experiment in the field with Pakistani participants we explore the interactions between social norms and the law. In a vignette, we ask male participants whether they would request from a sister that she foregoes her inheritance right. We ask female participants whether they would fulfil such a request. This part of the experiment gives us quantitative evidence on the degree by which the social norm overrides the legal rule. Yet self-report data may not be fully credible. We add credibility by a second part of the experiment. Participants are randomly matched with another (male or female) participant, and may punish this participant for the choice she has made (to follow the law, or the social norm). The social norm may have force as it is descriptive, as it is prescriptive, or both. As a measure of descriptive norms, we elicit beliefs about decisions (to ask for / accept the request to override the legal entitlement). As a measure of prescriptive norms, we elicit beliefs about punishment choices. We further administer a series of indicators for participants’ attitudes, and collect rich demographic information.

A very large majority of both male and female participants report that they would follow the norm, and circumvent the law. This is also what both males and females expect. Females who reject the request are severely punished, as are males who do not ask for circumventing the law. This too is expected, both by males and females. Regression analysis shows that female choices are chiefly explained by descriptive norms, while male choices are only explained by their belief about the punishment males receive when not asking for the law to be overridden, i.e. by a prescriptive norm.

All the foregoing is consistent with the dominance of (Hindu) tradition over (Muslim) law. Yet we also find a substantial amount of costly punishment inflicted upon other participants who follow the social (Hindu) norm, from participants who are willing to follow the norm themselves. We discuss alternative explanations for this unexpected finding.

Authors

• Shaheen Naseer, Lahore School of Economics

• Klaus Heine

• Christoph Engel, Max Planck Institute on Collective Goods