Towards Gender Equality in Inheritance – A Randomized Informational Intervention

Gender discrimination is commonplace not only in lower- and middle-income countries but correlates negatively with important development outcomes. The issue becomes particularly salient when gender discrimination is encoded in law (Duflo 2012; Jayachandran 2015). Legal reform, however, may be hindered or invalidated by restrictive social norms (Rosenblum 2015; Roy 2015 and Bhalotra et al. 2020).This research aims to provide a better understanding of the malleability of social norms in the context of Islamic inheritance law in Tunisia. Within an informational experiment, it tests whether providing information on gifting one’s daughter has a causal impact on individual attitudes regarding women’s right to inheritance.