READ THE WOMEN'S LAND RIGHTS PAPER N.9 ON PATRILINEAL AND MATRILINEAL SOCIETIES IN MALAWI
WOMEN'S LAND RIGHTS IN MALAWI
Malawi, with its dual matrilineal and patrilineal customary ownership system, offers action researchers a rare opportunity to investigate the relationship between land ownership and intra-household bargaining power, and thus to inform policy debates in poor and developing countries on how to secure women’s access to assets that would improve their lives and the lives of their children.
Problems related to issues of women and land under customary and statutory laws have been highly researched and documented in Malawi. However, much of the research that has been carried out in Malawi has concentrated on documenting the general situation in matrilineal and patrilineal societies. This research has often assumed that women’s ownership of land in matrilineal systems grants them automatic control rights over land and land resources and has therefore tended not to analyse the possible correlation between ownership, control and inter and intra-household bargaining power. This research is unique as it goes further to analyse how access to and control over ownership to land enhance women’s bargaining position within the household and ultimately contributes to improvements in their economic, social and cultural rights. In this sense, this research intended primarily to contribute to the debate surrounding the first intervention.
Our findings suggest that more research is required around interventions of the second type, namely how women’s social status may be improved in order to increase their inter- and intra-household bargaining and hence their access to and control over land. Furthermore, research needs to investigate the possibility that ownership and household bargaining power are mutually shaping relationships, in which the neglect of either dynamic is likely to impact negatively on the improvement of poor, rural women’s lives.
