Count owners and area
Ownership records can reveal inequalities beyond owner counts. Pakistan’s Punjab Gender Parity Report 2022, published in 2023, reports that women constituted 31.5% of recorded landowners in the province in 2022. It attributes these administrative data to PLRA and the Land Record Management Information System. It gives a mean holding of 2,150 square metres for women and 5,585 square metres for men. A substantial recorded share of owners can therefore coexist with a smaller average area. These figures concern Pakistani Punjab in 2022, not current ownership in both Punjabs.[1]
Choose the denominator
Bina Agarwal, Pervesh Anthwal and Malvika Mahesh’s 2021 study clarifies the measurement problem. The percentage of owners who are women is different from the percentage of women who own land. A household with one woman owner also differs from a household in which all adult women have a recorded share. Their framework additionally distinguishes individual and joint ownership, area and land quality. These indicators can show different inequalities even when derived from one dataset. Their own nine-state Indian panel does not include Punjab, so its findings cannot supply a missing Punjab estimate.[2]
Record inclusion and omissions
The Punjab report assembled indicators through departmental requests and secondary sources. Its published ownership totals do not independently demonstrate that every owner has been deduplicated across records, or establish who decides how a plot is used and who receives its income. The reported gap is important evidence of administrative visibility and recorded distribution, with those questions still open.[1]
Agarwal and her co-authors also show why survey design matters: listing only a household’s largest three owners can miss others, while an age-limited questionnaire can exclude older owners. Different denominators and coverage require separate interpretation. A seemingly simple ownership percentage cannot answer every question about women’s access to land.[2]
Sources & notes
Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.
- Punjab Commission on the Status of Women and Women Development Department; UNFPA-hosted copy. Punjab Gender Parity Report 2022 ↗ · Source date: 2023 (actual preliminary page; report period 2022, not upload 2024) · Locator: Actual publication year on PDF 1; title PDF 2; methods printed 6/PDF 26; land-ownership/mean-area text and figures 6.27–6.30, printed 170–172/PDF 194–196. Those three land pages rendered/visually inspected. Accessed 2026-11-02.Methods and land pages were inspected; rendered pages resolve clipped or duplicated text extraction. Administrative ownership totals were not independently deduplicated, and recorded ownership does not establish practical control.Return to Count owners and area, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Record inclusion and omissions, paragraph 1 ↑
- Bina Agarwal, Pervesh Anthwal and Malvika Mahesh; The Journal of Development Studies. How Many and Which Women Own Land in India? Inter-gender and Intra-gender Gaps ↗ · Source date: 2021-04-08 (actual published-online cover) · Locator: Actual cover/online-publication metadata PDF 1; printed article 1–7/PDF 2–8, especially multiple indicators, IHDS/NFHS measurement critique and the actual data/indicator definitions. The nine-state panel does not include Punjab. Accessed 2026-11-02.Indicator and data definitions were inspected. The panel does not include Punjab, so its measurement framework is distinguished from a Punjab ownership estimate.Return to Choose the denominator, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Record inclusion and omissions, paragraph 2 ↑
Record PH-JOU-0063 · English edition · human review not performed