The Case for Women's Rights to Land in Tanzania: Some Observations in the Context of AIDS!

Abstract

In the last two decades, the issue of women's independent rights to land has
come to be debated both internationally and in the Tanzanian context. Two
decades ago, it is arguable that the issue was barely admissible in the discourse
over public policy. The dominant conception of women and land was one which
subsumed the interests of women under that of men, and assumed a congruence
of interest between members of the family such that men's access to land was
thougp.tto also guarantee that of women. With the completion of a number of
studies in the intervening twenty years, this assumption has been challenged,
and the question of women's rights to land has come to be investigated in its
own right. The extent to which the debate has shifted in Tanzania was
demonstrated by the International Women's Day celebrations in 1977 where the
issue of women and land took a central place.