Attitudes towards Islamic inheritance: religious or patriarchal preferences?

Dina Rabie and Nora El-Bialy

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The Islamic inheritance law puts women at a distributive disadvantage leading to gender inequality in wealth accumulation. Religiosity and patriarchy are often blamed for the persistence of gender inequality in Muslim-majority countries. Employing an online vignette experiment, we examine whether religious and pro-male preferences reinforce gender inequality in inheritance in Egypt. We find that religious individuals prefer to abide by the inheritance law and its distributive inequality. We also find that individuals with pro-male cultural beliefs prefer to avoid the inheritance law only selectively to protect the male distributive advantage. Put together, we find that both religiosity and pro-male cultural beliefs are impediments to achieving gender equality in inheritance in Egypt.

Keywords: religiosity; pro-male culture; Islamic inheritance; vignette experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C99 D19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2025-09-12
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Published in Review of Law and Economics, 12, September, 2025. ISSN: 2194-6000

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:129627

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