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African rangelands are changing rapidly due to land use change, the erosion of traditional social institutions, and increasing concern about extreme events. These changes pose a challenge to the resilience of pastoral people, their herds, and the rangelands that they inhabit. Despite these changes, debates in academics and policy continue about the optimal herd size to maintain pastoral livelihoods while avoiding environmental degradation. In this study, we draw from 33 focus group discussions with Maasai men and women in northern Tanzania to explore herd size preferences for coping with extreme events. Study participants expressed a preference for larger herds, with the primary rationale being enhanced ability to cope with drought and other extreme events. Those with large herds are better able to sell a few animals, and this money can directly benefit the family and help feed the rest of the herd through purchasing supplemental feed in the form of pumba, crop residues, or access to farmland for grazing crop residues. These findings highlight new pathways and reasons that large herds can be useful. Chief among these is having enough animals to sell to buy supplemental feed and yet sustain a viable herd. Recognizing the cultural importance of livestock to Maasai along with local perspectives on livestock herd numbers will help in supporting culturally relevant adaptation policy and practice. For example, policies and projects could focus on enhancing resilience through facilitating the saving and storing of crop residues or helping maintain livestock prices during extreme events. 

Despite the extensive scholarship on women's empowerment and gender equality in the Global South, few studies have examined how changing livelihoods create new challenges and opportunities for women seeking access to intra-household decision-making. Here we examine pastoralist Maasai women's access to a range of household-level decisions that span more longstanding and more recent aspects of changing social and economic life. Our team conducted a mixed-methods data collection in 10 Maasai communities in northern Tanzania in 2018 and 2022. We (1) interviewed groups of women and men (n = 18) to identify key types of household decisions and the factors affecting women's access to them; and (2) conducted a survey of married women (n = 321) to identify individuals' perceptions of access to intra-household decision-making and other characteristics. We applied an information theoretic approach to model selection of fitted cumulative link mixed effects models. Our findings show that newer sources of human, social, and physical capital for women, including school-based education, land tenure, and community group membership, are associated with access to more contemporary decision types, including income generation, children's schooling, and children's health care. Alternatively, we find fewer pathways to decision-making for more longstanding decision types, including livestock management and children's marriage. Notably, agricultural land has a complex relationship with decision-making wherein basic access to land is associated with lower access to decision-making, but land tenure is associated with greater access. This study shows how marginalized women can leverage changing social and economic contexts to gain greater access to intra-household decision-making.