Controlling land they call their own: access and women's empowerment in Northern Tanzania

Abstract

Formal rights to land are often promoted as an essential part of empowering women, particularly in the Global South. We look at two grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on land rights and empowerment with Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania. Women involved with both NGOS attest to the power of land ownership for personal empowerment and transformations in gender relations. Yet very few have obtained land ownership titles. Drawing from Ribot and Peluso's theory of access, we argue that more than ownership rights to land, access – to land, knowledge, social relations and political processes – is leading to empowerment for these women, as well as helping to keep land within communities. We illustrate how the following are key to both empowerment processes and protecting community and women's land: (1) access to knowledge about legal rights, such as the right to own land; (2) access to customary forms of authority; and (3) access to a joint social identity – as women, as ‘indigenous people’ and as ‘Maasai'. Through this shared identity and access to knowledge and authority, women are strengthening their access to social relations (amongst themselves, with powerful political players and NGOs), and gaining strength through collective action to protect land rights.

Keywords:

• land
• gender
• women
• Tanzania
• Maasai
• empowerment
• property rights
• access

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the women in Northern Tanzania who participated in this study, and to Ndinini Kimesera Sikar and the rest of MWEDO, and Sinandei Makko and the UCRT team, for allowing us to observe their work. Additionally, we are especially grateful for the support and assistance in the field provided by (the late) Sophia Parkipuny, Neema Laizer, Mamus Litan and Esupat Ngulupa, as well as the Maasai enumerators who helped with the survey. We thank the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) for supporting the research efforts in Tanzania. The paper was greatly improved with the help of comments from Nicole Smith, Colleen Scanlon-Lyons, Emily Yeh, Jennifer Fluri and Jill Harrison, and two anonymous reviewers. We thank Nancy Thorwardson at The University of Colorado-Boulder, Institute for Behavioral Science for helping with the map. The authors alone are responsible for all opinions and omissions in the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹Legal scholar Issa Shivji (1999b) argues that this ordinance remains the basis for land ownership in Tanzania.

²The president retains the right to change the category of land if he deems it important for the nation. The risks of this were recently illustrated in Loliondo where the Tanzanian government attempted to claim Maasai village land for a wildlife corridor (Benjaminsen et al. 2013; Gardner 2012).

³‘Illegal access’ is part of the ‘legal access’ category and could include the dispossession of land from those who hold legal customary titles, such as through land grabs.

⁴Interview, 2009.

⁵MWEDO works on economic empowerment through registered women's groups (of 20–25 people).

⁶UCRT staff member, Edward Loure was awarded the prestigious 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa, for his work on securing community land rights.

⁷This structure mimics the Tanzanian governance system to facilitate acceptance and collaboration.

⁸Community Forum Meeting, Longido, 16 March 2010.

⁹Interview, male customary leader, Longido, June 2010.

¹⁰This is related to work of the Pastoral Women's Council (PWC), an NGO that works closely with UCRT but was not researched for this paper.

¹¹Some argue that women own their houses and control milk. Yet, with modern housing structures, changes have occurred in claims of ownership (Talle, 1998) and while women may control milk use and sales, they do not own cattle, which can be sold by men without their agreement.

¹²Interview, Elder, Longido, 26 May 2009.

¹³Hodgson (2000) argues that male ‘ownership’ of cattle is relatively new, a product of colonial interventions. Historically, Maasai men and women shared overlapping ‘rights’ to livestock including decisions regarding sale and slaughter, and women maintained exclusive rights over certain animals.

¹⁴Interview, Elder, Longido, 26 May 2009.

¹⁵Meeting with nine women, Loborsoit village, 17 June 2010.

¹⁶Interview, widow, Oltukai village, July 2009.

¹⁷Interview, middle-aged married woman, Longido, 20 August 2013.

¹⁸Interview, elder woman, Longido, 26 May 2009.

¹⁹Including but not limited to UCRT, Pastoralist Women's Council (PWC), Pastoralist Indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations Forum (PINGOs), Community Research and Development Services (CORDS).

²⁰This reflects confusion around the title which does include the two villages, for whom the area is held in ‘trust’ (Goldman 2011).

²¹Interview with MWEDO group member, June 2013.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Colorado-Boulder Innovative Seed Grant, Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTS), and the Council for Research and Creative Work (CRCW), Grant-in-Aid; and the National Science Foundation collaborative research grant [NSF grant # 0921507].

Notes on contributors

Mara J. Goldman

Mara J. Goldman is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and a faculty associate in the Institute for Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado–Boulder. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (geography) and was a post-doctoral fellow at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, where she conducted research on ‘Communication and the politics of participation in pastoral societies'. Goldman's research is situated in human-environment geography and can best be described as political ecology with a focus on questions of empowerment, access to resources, knowledge, and decision-making processes. Specific research projects focus on the following overlapping areas: the politics of wildlife conservation (knowledge and practice); the politics of participation and knowledge regarding natural resource management and development; changing resource governance, knowledge and ecologies as related to climate change in semi-arid rangelands; the gendered dynamics of resource access and use; and women's empowerment processes. Her work is based in East Africa, specifically with pastoral/agro-pastoral Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya. She is co-editor (with P. Nadasdy, and M.D. Turner) of Knowing nature: conversations at the intersection of political ecology and science studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Alicia Davis

Alicia Davis holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from CU–Boulder and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Glasgow conducting research on zoonotic diseases in pastoral communities. She is also a research affiliate in the Institute for Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado–Boulder. She specializes in issues related to environment, conservation, gender and livelihoods primarily in East Africa. Email: [email protected]

Jani Little

Jani S. Little is the director of Computing and Research Services at the Institute for Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado–Boulder. She is an African demographer, statistician and migration specialist. Email: [email protected]