SINGLE WOMEN’S ACCESS TO LAND IN COMMUNAL AREAS OF ZIMBABWE

WOMEN'S LAND RIGHTS IN ZIMBABWE

Dominant arguments about women’s land access stress the vulnerability of single women’s land rights in customary tenure areas. The vulnerability is based on long-held assumptions about customary tenure land governance, land use and gender relations. The paper seeks to contribute to the debate on customary tenure area land access, landlessness and understanding customary tenure evolution. Although single women have increasingly insecure tenure on customary tenure lands, in those systems spaces exist for single women to negotiate access to land. These spaces remain hidden in customary tenure analysis that focuses on the primary-secondary rights dichotomy and the use of land as an agricultural asset. Drawing on case studies of 22 women in a customary tenure area in Zimbabwe, the paper shows that although resource governance systems in customary tenure areas are male-biased, more diverse opportunities of access exist than previously thought and single women have more room to manoeuvre.