Attitudes towards Islamic inheritance: religious or patriarchal preferences?

Rabie, Dina and El-Bialy, Nora (2025) Attitudes towards Islamic inheritance: religious or patriarchal preferences? Review of Law and Economics. ISSN 2194-6000

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Management
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BL Religion H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory K Law
JEL classification:	C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C9 - Design of Experiments > C99 - Other D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D19 - Other
Date Deposited:	29 Sep 2025 15:57
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2025 18:21
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129627

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