However, Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association director Emilia Muchawa told IPS that although 86 percent of the country's women earn a living farming communal land allocated to their husbands by traditional chiefs, legislation is silent on the issue of women's rights to inherit this land.

"Customarily chiefs allocate land to male heads of households, but women do not automatically inherit this upon their husband's death.

"They may be evicted from the land when widowed, regardless of the years they spent married. Many who remain on the land do so at the goodwill of their in-laws or traditional leaders. Childless widows are often evicted, as are young widows who refuse to be physically `inherited' by a male relative of their late husband," she told IPS. [...] Read more.