Gender and Land Reform

Zimbabwe's nationalist and post-colonial ambitions have been largely defined by land reform. Allison Goebel assesses Zimbabwe's successes and failures in incorporating gender issues into the broader project of land redistribution. Based on fieldwork in the Sengezi resettlement area in east central Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and 2002, Gender and Land Reform situates gender within the larger issues of race, class, and international political economy. Goebel examines the social forces and effects of the resettlement process, including state policy and legislation, customary norms and practices, local institutions, and ideologies and cosmologies. Her study emphasizes the strategic choices women make in new institutional and household contexts and considers the interests of poor women who have been marginalized within the land reform process.