article

Women, marginality and the Zulu state: women's institutions and power in the early nineteenth century

Journal of African history39 (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).
Subjects
Theoretical orientation in research and its results
Sociocultural trends
Gender status
Regulation of marriage
Mode of marriage
Lineages
Chief executive
Executive household
Gender roles and issues
culture
Zulu
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)