Pursuing gender-transformative change in customary tenure systems: civil society work in Zambia

ABSTRACT

This article examines activities undertaken by civil society organisations in Zambia to create gender-transformative change in customary tenure systems. It is based on primary data collected through interviews and group discussions with NGO representatives, lawyers and women’s rights advocates, chiefs, women leaders, and local community members. The findings show that organisations pursue change by leveraging global and national frameworks and discourses and working with traditional authorities, local magistrates, men and women at the village level. Promoting gender transformative change requires multi-level networking and working across hierarchies of power that extend from the household to the state.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil society – NGOs
• Governance and public policy
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements

Conversations with Denise Humphreys Bebbington, Laura Sauls, Kysseline Cherestal, Stephanie Keene, and Solange Bandiaky-Badji greatly enhanced this project. I thank Gloria Mushimba for her friendship and help executing this research and Marja Hinfelaar and Maria Klara Kuss for advice on research logistics. I am grateful to all the men and women in Lusaka and the Eastern Province who shared their stories of pursuing gender justice with me. All errors remain my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Cynthia Caron is an Assistant Professor of International Development, Community and Environment at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. She is a development and political sociologist with broad interests in natural resource governance and development practice.

ORCID

Cynthia M. Caron http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1990-6529

Notes

1 To protect the identities of the chiefs, chiefdoms are not listed.

2 These rules are taken from three certificates issued in the Eastern Province that were reviewed.

3 A Swedish-funded agricultural project in Zambia found household food security and educational gains by focusing on intra-household cooperation (www.g-fras.org/en/knowledge/gender-equality-in-ras-3.html?download=178:transforming-gender-relations-in-agriculture-in-sub-saharain-africa).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Rights and Resources Initiative, Washington, DC.