“Our daughters inherit our land, but our sons use their wives' fields”: matrilineal-matrilocal land tenure and the New Land Policy in Malawi

Abstract

Renewed efforts in recent years to reform land tenure policy in Sub-Saharan African countries have – in some cases – included provisions aimed at improving women's land rights. The premise of such provisions is that women's land rights under customary tenure are fragile, threatened, and/or in the process of being undermined. The matrilineal-matrilocal areas in Southern Malawi described here present a counter case. Only daughters are the heirs of their matrilineage's land, while sons use their wives' land or, in special circumstances, have temporary use of fields belonging to their female matrikin. This pattern has prevailed in the face of a long and continuing history of prejudice against matriliny. Now, a new land policy, not yet passed into law, includes an explicit aim to protect and improve land rights for women. Yet the means selected by the policy – land inheritance by both sons and daughters and extension of greater authority to traditional leaders in the administration of land – will be likely, if implemented, to have opposite effects in matrilineal-matrilocal areas.