In 1998, over seven years after a Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters was appointed by the then president of Tanzania, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, in January 1991, it is expected that a Land Bill will be tabled in the Tanzanian National Assembly. These seven years have witnessed mounting debate on the purpose and direction of land tenure reform. The purpose of this article is to review the debate in order to show that the question of women's unequal rights to land has been almost totally neglected. The article explores the politics of the land tenure reform process in Tanzania, and examines the reasons why the gender gap in the command over property has received little attention. Tanzania is presently at an important juncture in the restructuring of land relations. Since the issue of land reform came to the forefront of the political agenda in the early 1990s, an opportunity has existed to address the question of women's ownership and control of land. I argue, however, that this opportunity has not been taken, and that the issue of women's land rights has become marginalised within the debate and consequently in policy.

Examining first what may be termed the mainstream of the land tenure debate, conducted on the whole by those involved in making major policy recommendations and drafting legislation, it is argued that the issue of gender has been largely ignored. There have been a number of opportunities when the specific issue of women's relations to land should have been explicitly addressed in research findings and recommendations. Instead, one sees no more than a passing acknowledgement of the gender dimensions of land tenure reform. This is most noticeably the case in the academic writing of those who profess themselves to be most concerned with the land issue as one of democracy and justice. A number of reasons will be canvassed to explain this.

This article goes on to discuss the role of gender progressive groups, such as women's advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in the land reform debate. Whilst it might be expected that such groups would be concerned to ensure that women's land rights are addressed, especially when the issue is being neglected in the mainstream debate, it is clear that in Tanzania they have been unable to challenge the marginalisation of gender issues in the reform agenda. I advance a number of reasons why feminist analyses of the land issue have been hampered and why there has been a failure to respond effectively to the opportunity to press the government for reforms to address women's demands.

Women's unequal command of property, and the question of how it might be overcome, merits attention. If there is to be progress, researchers and activists will have to document and theorise women's land relations, and I discuss some issues which might be addressed in order to broaden the land tenure reform agenda. These include questions about the form which women's land rights might take, how they might be achieved, and the strategies which will need to be adopted in pressuring the state for land reforms.