Nomadic Women's Right to Inheritance :A Case Study on Seyaal Tribe in Delfan District, Lorestan Province

Women's inheritance right is one of the major rights that has been neglected by some societies. In most nomadic communities, women are deprived of the right of inheritance, even though they accompany men in all aspects of life. Answering to why this is so, this study has been conducted among the Seyaal tribe in Delfan district, Lorestan province with a qualitative approach and thematic analysis method and in-depth interview. The findings showed that in the recent hundred years, women’s right to inheritance in the Seyaal tribe has not changed significantly and in paying inheritance to women, they disregard the Sharii principles and formal laws and rely solely on the customary principles derived from the tribal system. There are legitimacy and justifications to transfer the inheritance right to men in the tribal system and not to pay it to women. However, this system in the Seyaal tribe has always left windows of hope and root rights for the women and has resisted against transferring the inheritance to men and its formally registering. In sum, economic factors have created a strong social structure among the nomads. Although those factors have nowadays become insignificant, the social structure is so strong that does not allow women to claim and receive their right to inheritance.