Land Tenure Reforms and Women’s Land Rights in Plural ‘Legal’ and Cultural Settings: A Comparative Study of the Arsii Oromo and Dorze-Gamo, Ethiopia

Abstract

The question of women’s land rights in the context of multiple legal and cultural settings has been at the center of academic and policy discourses. This paper focuses on the implications of land tenure reforms for women’s land rights in the context of plural legal settings considering Arsii Oromo and Dorze-Gamo cultural contexts. The study relies on ethnographic data gathered from Kokossa district (Oromia Regional State) and Chencha district, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Regional State. The findings reveal that people in both study sites are aware of state laws and policies that uphold women’s land rights. However, women’s success in benefiting from legal provisions is constrained by cultural factors, among others, taboos, norms of residence, territorialization of lineages and rules of inheritance. Although social structural issues largely limit women’s rights to own land in both cultural settings, the Dorze case seems more complex and detrimental to women’s land rights as the Gamo land tenure system is embedded in the indigenous religion that embraces gome, a complex taboo system. Gome, which embraces taboos related to sex, marriage and descent, effectively limits the right of women to live and work on lands belonging to their patrilineal descent.