Gregory Myers, (1995):
Land Tenure Development in Mozambique, Implications for Econimic Development

B. Women's Access and Rights Under Customary Tenure

In either patrilinear or matrilinear societies, women generally obtain rights through men. While it is widely believed that women in matrilinear societies have more secure claims to land, the essential difference between the systems, in practice, relates to how men obtain land: whether through their mother's kin or through their father's. In most cases, men are given access to land, and consolidate their claims by clearing it themselves and / or parceling the land out to household laborers or, in some cases, "contractual" laborers (discussed more below). While women constitute one of the primary cultivators or users of these lands, only in rare cases are they permitted to obtain security of tenure. Instead, during their youth, females worked along side their mothers on fields which nominally belong to their father, or perhaps their mother's brother. Upon marriage, a woman cultivates land arranged by her husband. And, in cases of divorce or the death of her husband, a woman cannot automatically make claims on the land but rather, must usually return to lands owned by her father, or perhaps by a brother or even a son.

This is not to suggest, however, that the continued availability of a piece of land for a woman to cultivate is simply subject to the unconstrained whims of males. Normally the same plot of land will remain the work place for the same individual be it daughter, wife, mother, etc. so long as that individual needs it, i.e. so long as the social status of the woman and the social relations between her and the owner of the land remain unchanged. For all practical reasons, a plot is then recognized to be the legitimate domain of that woman. Indeed, historically, it has only been with great difficulty that a man can take a plot away from a particular woman and give it to another unless he is able to alter the socially recognized relationship he has with her. This means that a man cannot easily give one of the wive's land to another wife, nor can he evict her, without divorcing her and having that divorce recognized by the community. A father cannot easily deny land to a daughter who has been cultivating it without her being married - a process in which his own participation is essential. Neither can a widow be easily dispossessed of land upon the death of her husband unless she remarries into a new family. Her status as a legitimate claimant is strengthened if she is a mother, but in any case, it is normally incumbent upon the family of her husband to insure her survival by leaving her in place on her land or arranging her marriage to another male member of the family.

In this way, women's claims are understood to be nested in the claim of the male who parceled land out to her, but to have a certain force in and of themselves. In the matrilinear societies of the north, mechanisms have been stronger for the family of a woman to protect her interests (and hence the well-being of her sons) by exerting pressure on her husband. Nonetheless, even there, women have rarely been able to defend themselves without the backing of male family members. Research conducted by the Land Tenure Center in Mozambique during the last three years, particularly in the post-war period, suggests that the way in which women gain access to land and defend their rights has been changing, making access increasingly difficult and eroding the strength of women's tenure rights. This is discussed more fully below.