Finding new coping mechanisms: the impact of HIV and AIDS on women's access to land in Mozambique

Abstract

In this full thesis, I explore the impact that HIV and AIDS pandemic is having in the livelihood strategies of rural women in Mozambique. My intention in this work is to highlight the navigation of Mozambican women through this harsh era. I establish a discussion about land as major asset in a poor and mainly agricultural country like Mozambique. And the fact that many scholars and policy makers are concerned about the escalating number of young widows that have had their land and other assets expropriated after the deaths of their husbands, mainly due to the HIV and AIDS pandemic. The convergence of the colonization process, the civil war (that took over 16 years in Mozambique) and the modernization/development process have been systematically trapping women in the interface between traditional and modern social organization. Now, with the spread of HIV and AIDS, young women and children whose only source of subsistence is their land have been losing their traditional rights, and they face the cultural changes brought about by a new social order that does not support them and their children after the death of a husband or father.