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A Less Gendered Access to Land? The Impact of Tanzania's New Wave of Land Reform
Author(s) -
Pedersen Rasmus Hundsbæk
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
development policy review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.671
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1467-7679
pISSN - 0950-6764
DOI - 10.1111/dpr.12121
Subject(s) - tanzania , land reform , disadvantaged , land law , land tenure , state (computer science) , political science , land administration , economic growth , geography , development economics , economics , environmental planning , archaeology , algorithm , computer science , agriculture
Contemporary land reforms in sub‐Saharan Africa tend to be evaluated based on the state‐centric reforms of the past, which disadvantaged women. However, this article argues that the new‐wave of land reforms and their decentralised administration institutions and anti‐discriminatory legal frameworks may be different. Based on field research on the implementation of Tanzania's 1999 Land Acts, it identifies an institutional reconfiguration in which the formal institutions are gradually strengthened and the customary institutions slowly changed. This does not in itself pose a threat to women's access to land and some women, who are otherwise often perceived to be weak, are left better‐off. Nevertheless, access to land becomes socially more uneven.