To understand why women's legal claims to land succeed or fail in practice it is necessary to look beyond statutory frameworks and the walls of the courtroom and consider the dynamics of disputes as a whole. This chapter extends the institutional analysis of ward tribunals within local government set out in Chapter Two in order to consider how other social, political and professional actors who are engaged in disputing processes interact and affect the course of legal disputes. Two women's experiences of making legal claims to land in Arusha are taken as the starting point and focus for an analysis of the significance of individual agency and power relations between actors on access to justice.

The women's claims progress from the ward tribunal into other fora beyond the local community, including district and NGO offices and higher levels of court. This chapter considers how the introduction of professionals into the dispute reconfigures power relations between existing social actors. Reflecting upon the experiences of the two women demonstrates that there is a need for greater consciousness-raising for all those involved in assisting litigants in disputing processes, regarding their personal impact on the power dynamics of a dispute. This applies equally to family elders, local leaders or legal professionals. Awareness of power dynamics within a dispute and the consequent choices made by individual actors may prove pivotal in facilitating or obstructing access to justice for litigants.

TWO WOMEN's EXPERIENCES

The two women's stories are in many ways characteristic of the types of claims to land made by women in rural and peri-urban areas of Arusha. In each case the woman's claim represented a reactive use of law, made in response to being forcibly ousted from her land by a male relative. Both claims were made by women whose land problems began at a stage in their lives when they had very limited power within their own families. In each case the woman brought her claim against a male family member, the first against a guardian in-law, the second against a husband. The cases offer individual personal insights into how power struggles over land in families escalate and shape the dynamics of a dispute and their outcome in statutory legal fora. They also demonstrate strategies that women in relatively weak positions of power adopt in attempting to secure the return of their land.