Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilLes journées de la SAP37(S)Résumés des journées 2025Female house ownership drives the...

Résumés des journées 2025

Female house ownership drives the positive association between matriliny and women’s health in Meghalaya (India)

La propriété de la maison par les femmes sous-tend l’association positive entre matrilinéarité et santé des femmes au Méghalaya (Inde)
Loïa Lamarque, Michel Raymond, Banrida Langstieh et Alexandra Alvergne

Texte intégral

1Matrilineal kinship, which traces descent through the mother’s lineage, has been shown to have health benefits for both women and children, but the specific practices by which matriliny enhances female health outcomes remain unclear. In this study, we analysed the 2015 Demographic and Health Survey data from Meghalaya, India (4,109 women, 809 men, 3,197 children), a region where matrilineal and non-matrilineal communities coexist with a mixed combination of post-marital residence and inheritance transmission. We considered three practices usually associated with matrilineal systems (i) female house ownership, (ii) matrilocal post-marital residence and (iii) daughter-biased investment. We find no evidence for daughter-biased parental investment in medical care nor improved health with spatial proximity with kin. Instead, we demonstrate that female (vs. male) ownership correlates with substantial health benefits for women, including reduced risks of being anaemic (OR=0.72, SE=0.093, p<0.001) and underweight (OR=0.59, SE=0.135, p<0.001), a benefit which extend to men, albeit to a lesser extent, and children. Boys and girls living in households owned by women are more likely to receive medical care when sick (+200%). The associations between female house ownership and better health outcomes remain after adjusting for age, wealth disparities, geographical area, fertility, or time since last birth. These results strongly suggest that female economic empowerment surpasses other matrilineal dimensions in improving health outcomes, providing novel insights to bridge the gender health gap.

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Loïa Lamarque, Michel Raymond, Banrida Langstieh et Alexandra Alvergne, « Female house ownership drives the positive association between matriliny and women’s health in Meghalaya (India) »Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris [En ligne], 37(S) | 2025, mis en ligne le 16 janvier 2025, consulté le 13 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bmsap/15068 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/133ou

Haut de page

Auteurs

Loïa Lamarque

Institut des Sciences de l’évolution, Montpellier, France ; Ined, Paris, France ; loia.lamarque[at]ens-paris-saclay.fr

Michel Raymond

Institut des Sciences de l’évolution, Montpellier, France

Banrida Langstieh

North Eastern Hills University, Shillong, India

Alexandra Alvergne

Institut des Sciences de l’évolution, Montpellier, France

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search