Land grabbing, agrarian change and gendered power relations: the case of rural Maasai women of Lepurko village, Northern Tanzania

This paper presents the relation between impacts of land grabs and rural women’s disempowerment among Maasai community of Lepurko village situ-ated in the Northern part of Tanzania. This paper explores the issues of land ownership and land rights experienced by the ‘marginalized’ indigenous people mainly the women in order to determine how land grabs occur (who grabs the land from whom). A central aim of the study is thus to ask how land grabs in-fluence Maasai women’s efforts to achieve empowerment. Four questions posed by Bernstein in his agrarian political economy are used to guide the exploration of how land rights among ‘marginalized’ indigenous people and land policies in Tanzania affect Maasai women’s power relations. Moreover, different concepts and approaches relevant to the wider area of study will be used as the analytical lens. This question is discussed in relation to how the community and the state interact, since such interactions can be considered vitally important when it comes to issues of land grabbing, resource allocation and gendered power rela-tions. One of the key findings of this study is that once women are provided with land ownership titles, they gain confidence in legal protection. This study confirms the view that land title matters to rural Maasai women, when faced with land grab situations, although none of the key informant women does not hold a right to own land as of the moment this research took place. This study sug-gests at the end if gender lenses are placed on the issue land deals, land owner-ship can be seen as a key issue influencing the outcomes of land grabbing on women compared with men.