article
Women, marginality and the Zulu state: women's institutions and power in the early nineteenth century
Journal of African history • 39 (3) • Published In 1998 • Pages: 389-415
By: Hanretta, Sean.
Abstract
This study argues that social, cultural, and material conditions of women became highly stratified during the early nineteenth century. Potential for both exploitation and the acquisition of power and prestige increased as women's lives became integrated into the Zulu state. Changes in women's status and roles were not only the result of state centralization, but an important source of power which kings used to try to maintain control over lineage elites. As a result, struggles for political power between Zulu kings and lineage elites played a large role in women's lives, affecting the degree of stratification in general, as well as determining in part the fate of individual women. While some fundamental elements of the cultural construction of masculinity and feminity remained constant throughout this period and shaped the ways in which socio-economic changes were experienced, certain roles began to be seen as determined by women's social and political association rather than as inhering in the nature of the female body. Individual women responded in a variety of ways to try to minimize losses in power or status and to capitalize on new opportunities; but women also initiated more coherent society-wide changes. Growing dissatisfaction among women with the extent of state interference in personal relationships or with the disparity between their own status and that of royal and favored women may have brought about one of the most important changes in Zulu religious history: the appearance of women as dominant members of the class of diviners (p. 415).
- HRAF PubDate
- 2005
- Region
- Africa
- Sub Region
- Southern Africa
- Document Type
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- Analyst
- John Beierle ; 2004
- Field Date
- no date
- Coverage Date
- ca.1800-1890s
- Coverage Place
- South Africa
- Notes
- by Sean Hanretta
- Includes bibliographical references
- LCCN
- 63005723
- LCSH
- Zulu (African people)