Women's Mechanisms of Access to Fast Track Land in Zimbabwe and their Implications on Land Rights

Abstract

This paper presents reviewed literature on women’s mechanisms of land access and subsequent land rights during Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe. While Zimbabwe launched three successive land reforms including FTLRP with one of the objectives being to address historical land imbalances, women’s land rights in the present-day context are still secondary. Constitutional provisions of gender equality and balance without the provision of a gender responsive policy framework that utilises the ‘difference approach’ and lack of equal representation in FTLRP’s land governance institutions did not address different women’s land woes. Findings from this study further shows that women’s mechanisms of land access and land rights were fluid and varied between categories (married and unmarried) and within the same category (young and elderly widows; women in polygamous and monogamous marriages) of women. Since there are pointers that the FTLRP is still with us, this study recommends that future land policies should adopt the ‘difference approach’ when dealing with women’s land issues. Furthermore, the land policy should imbed clauses that promote not only gender balance in land allocation but also in implementing structures if future land reforms are to respond to different circumstances of different categories of women.