Women's Strategies for Customary Land Access in Swaziland and Malawi: A Comparative Study

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Periodical article

Title:	Women's Strategies for Customary Land Access in Swaziland and Malawi: A Comparative Study
Author:	Rose, Laurel L.
Year:	2002
Periodical:	Africa Today
Volume:	49
Issue:	2
Period:	Summer
Pages:	123-149
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Swaziland - Eswatini Malawi
Subjects:	Chewa Swazi customary law land law women Women's Issues Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Law, Human Rights and Violence Cultural Roles Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v049/49.2rose.pdf
Abstract:	In most African countries, the land-access and use rights of rural populations have been undergoing considerable changes in recent years, primarily due to informal developments in customary land law at the village level and formal legislative changes in land law at the national level. This paper compares the informal developmentss, as concerns women's land access, that are occurring in one village of the patrilineal Swazi of Swaziland, with those occurring in one village of the matrilineal Chewa of Malawi. In particular, it focuses on two case studies in which a Swazi woman and a Chewa woman resorted to strategies of manipulation, challenge, or change in order to acquire land. It argues that Swazi and Chewa women are similarly confronting evolving systems of customary land access, although individual women in each society are creatively responding to the rules of land access, according to personal and contextual factors. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]