A Fair Share for Women: Toward More Equitable Land Compensation and Resettlement in Tanzania and Mozambique

This research paper examines how land compensation and resettlement frameworks in Tanzania and Mozambique marginalize rural women. It finds that women are often excluded from decision-making and compensation payments due to subordinate household roles and legal gaps that ignore subsistence farming and communal resource use. The paper recommends mandatory joint compensation, gender quotas in governance, and legally binding commitments for infrastructure and employment to ensure gender equity.

• Women in Tanzania and Mozambique are disproportionately affected by large-scale land investments in agribusiness, extractives, and logging. They face greater difficulties than men in rebuilding livelihoods after resettlement due to a lack of formal land rights, higher illiteracy rates, limited mobility, and subordinate roles within their households and communities.
• Legal frameworks in Tanzania and Mozambique fail to protect rural women from harmful commercial land deals. While laws require community consultations and compensation, they often ignore women's specific land interests, their farming activities, and their reliance on common property resources like water, firewood, and wild plants.
• Compensation processes are frequently exclusionary for women because payments are typically made at the household level to the husband as the head of household. Additionally, women often receive lower payments because they manage smaller plots and grow subsistence crops, which are frequently not compensated, unlike the cash crops primarily grown by men.
• Women are underrepresented in the decision-making bodies that govern land acquisition and resettlement. In Mozambique, the technical committee overseeing resettlement does not mandate women's representation, and the gender ministry is not required to provide input on resettlement plans.
• General compensation and resettlement practices in both countries are often inadequate. Common issues include the non-compensation of 'idle' or 'unused' land, undervalued crops, delayed cash payments, and the provision of replacement farmlands that are smaller and less fertile than the original land.
• To improve gender equity, the paper recommends mandating compensation for all household members with land interests, using joint payment mechanisms, and ensuring replacement land is registered in the names of both spouses. It also suggests implementing gender quotas in decision-making bodies and creating gender-sensitive grievance mechanisms.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). A Fair Share for Women: Toward More Equitable Land Compensation and Resettlement in Tanzania and Mozambique. https://www.wri.org/research/fair-share-women-toward-more-equitable-land-compensation-and-resettlement-tanzania-and

Chicago

World Resources Institute. A Fair Share for Women: Toward More Equitable Land Compensation and Resettlement in Tanzania and Mozambique. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/fair-share-women-toward-more-equitable-land-compensation-and-resettlement-tanzania-and.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=A Fair Share for Women: Toward More Equitable Land Compensation and Resettlement in Tanzania and Mozambique |url=https://www.wri.org/research/fair-share-women-toward-more-equitable-land-compensation-and-resettlement-tanzania-and |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendfair, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{A Fair Share for Women: Toward More Equitable Land Compensation and Resettlement in Tanzania and Mozambique}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/fair-share-women-toward-more-equitable-land-compensation-and-resettlement-tanzania-and}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }