Gender and tenure insecurity in a matrilineal customary system

Laura Meinzen-Dick and Helder Zavale

Land Use Policy, 2025, vol. 157, issue C

Abstract: In this paper, we document patterns of land tenure insecurity in a matrilineal region of Mozambique. Using data from a survey of nearly two thousand agricultural households in two districts of Mozambique, we explore the gendered sources and covariates of tenure insecurity that stems either from private land disputes or collective expropriation (by government or large-scale land investors). We find that overall, nearly half of respondents report experiencing collective land tenure insecurity, as compared with only 11.5 % reporting individual tenure insecurity. We further distinguish gendered patterns, finding that men feel 4 percentage points less secure about their rights on the same parcel, a notable finding compared with the majority of evidence from (patrilineal) Africa. Secondly, we make use of the fact that in several of the villages surveyed, the government carried out land rights documentation interventions. Individuals in villages that received formal community land certificates are less worried about collective expropriation than their counterparts in undocumented villages. Finally, we probe the heterogeneity in responses to documentation programs by gender and marital status. This paper fills a crucial gap, by empirically documenting gendered patterns of customary tenure and insecurity in a matrilineal system (15 % of societies in Sub-Saharan Africa practice matrilineal kinship, according to the Ethnographic Atlas), as well as by contributing to a literature that aims to fit land rights documentation interventions to the needs of the community and most effectively enhance tenure security.

Keywords: Customary tenure; Documentation; Expropriation; Tenure insecurity; Mozambique; Matrilineal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 O17 P48 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:157:y:2025:i:c:s0264837725001802

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107646

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