Pastoral Rangeland Privatization and Women’s Well-Being: A Gendered Analysis of Tenure Transformations among the Maasai of Southern Kenya

Abstract: 

The Kenyan pastoral rangelands are undergoing tenure reform, changing from customary systems of communal management to the privatization and allocation of individual freehold title. This process has stirred up considerable debate among scholars, policy makers, and pastoralists, with many warning of impending crises of livelihood disruption and advocating for a return to the customary collective land tenure systems. At the academic and policy levels, the voices and perspectives of female pastoralists in this debate are remarkably absent. Yet, locally, among the Maasai in Kenya, women hold strong opinions about which tenure system best secures their rights over productive resources and provides them with opportunities for development. This paper explores the neglected gendered dimensions of rangeland tenure reform and investigates the impacts that privatization has on women’s well-being. Through a comparative, ethnographic and mixed method approach, the paper illuminates how women's positions on privatization and the ways in which they are impacted by this change in tenure are diverse and importantly shaped by cross-cutting factors such as age, socio-economic status, and family circumstance. As such, it sets the stage for further investigation into the gendered complexity of change brought about by privatization.