ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effects of resettlement upon gender relations and upon married and widowed women's lives. It finds research carried out in the 1980s in several resettlement areas (RAs) in north-eastern Zimbabwe. The chapter argues that resettlement policies, although beginning to change by the 1990s, still operated to keep wives the dependents of husbands by assigning land to household 'heads'; and widows are assuming more important roles and are becoming more numerous. It also argues that not only gender but other factors such as class, age and marital status need to be examined in any evaluation of the position of 'women'. The chapter discusses that despite women's situation of de facto legal, economic and structural dependence, resettlement has nevertheless benefited wives and widows in several respects. The policy of assigning land to 'household heads', normally men, remains the most important determinant of married women's position, since upon divorce they lose rights to stay within RAs.
