This study is about the impact of decentralization reforms on service delivery in rural villages in Tanzania from a gender perspective. Decentralization has emerged as an important trend in development policy and discourse in recent years. Most countries worldwide have attempted decentralization of the fiscal, political and administrative responsibilities from central governments to lower level governments. As a World Bank (2008:5) report asserts: “Everyone is doing it.” Although not completely a new phenomenon, the current wave of decentralization focuses on enhancing service users’ participation and improving service delivery. The World Bank (2004:187) emphasizes that “decentralization must reach the clinic, the classroom and local water utilities in ways that create opportunities for strengthening accountability between citizens, politicians and policy makers.” The theory is that in a decentralized system, public services should be more responsive to local needs because citizens can directly or indirectly influence decisions about resource allocation and service delivery. It is argued that decentralizing responsibilities to local governments will result in better use of resources and deliver more appropriate services since decisions will reflect local needs and priorities (Jeppsson and Okuonzi, 2000; Ribot, 2002; Devas and Grant, 2003; World Bank, 2004, 2008; Ahmad et al., 2005; Ribot et al., 2006; Andrews and de Vries, 2007). Decentralization is also often regarded as an important vehicle for enhancing women’s participation in local decision-making processes and for addressing gender inequality (Beall, 2007). In reality, however, the evidence about these expectations is mixed. In terms of development thinking and practice, decentralization reforms have coincided with a paradigm shift in governance theory from monocentric governance, an approach where the state is the centre of political power and authority, towards polycentric governance, the idea of multiple centres of power within a state (Termeer et al., 2010). In this view, decentralization is viewed as an appropriate response to the problems of state failure that were characteristic of many developing countries in the 1970s and 1980s and lead into the decline of most state provided public services (Batley, 2004; World Bank, 2004; Ahmad et al., 2005; Mehrotra, 2006). Thus, the recent decentralization reforms have been implemented in the context of new approaches to public management (Hope, 2001; Batley, 2004; Larbi, 2005). In the context of new public management, decentralization is aimed at replacing the “highly centralized and hierarchical government structures by decentralized management environments where decisions on resource allocation and service delivery are made closer to the point of service delivery” (Hope, 2001:120). The emphasis is on ‘bringing the state in’ as opposed to earlier reforms which focused on ‘rolling back the state’ (Beall, 2007). Consequently, local government reforms have been used as a supporting strategy for decentralization because reforms are needed to improve governance and service delivery capacity of local governments required to fulfil their new responsibilities (Andrews and de Vries, 2007; Dubois and Fattore, 2009). Tanzania fits well into this global picture because of its long and ‘troubled’ history of implementing decentralization reforms. More recently, the country has pursued local government reforms aimed at improving the quality, access and equitable delivery of public services provided through or facilitated by local government authorities (LGAs). The recent reforms