Considering ‘gender fluidity’ in Zambia: femininities, marriage and social influence

ABSTRACT

With reference to Ifi Amadiume’s book Male Daughters, Female Husbands, this article offers an analysis of ‘gender fluidity’ by reflecting on ‘female-husbands’ and their position of influence within extended families in Zambia. Based on my auto-ethnographical reflections, I argue that women who are ‘female-husbands’ have a sphere of influence that is intertwined with versions of ‘gender fluidity’ that has been shaped by a combination of lineage systems and changing contemporary gendered subjectivities.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• fluid
• women
• marriage
• influence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Alangizi is a word in Nyanja (a language commonly spoken in Lusaka city) that refers to ‘Those who guide/advise others’ when a woman becomes of age gets married (WLSA 1999, 51).

2 Citenge (sometimes spelt Kitenge, chitenge or vitenge in plural) fabric found in parts of Southern and East Africa that is similar to sarong. It is often worn by women and wrapped around the chest or waist, over the head as a headscarf, or as a baby sling.

3 A language commonly spoken in Lusaka and many other urban contexts in Zambia.

4 She described an mpuke as a social structure that was distinctly mother-focused that occupied a self contained compound of mothers and children. It provided an economic hub of activity that produced food for its members. It was also an ideological unit bound by the spirit of common motherhood (umunne). A step removed from this matricentric mother-focused unit is an obi – a social space that centred masculine authority, jural authority and masculine gods. Both mpuke and Obi are not necessarily limited to visual or biological interpretations of gender.

5 Berlant and Warner (1998) in Tadele (2011) define heteronormativity as a set of ‘ … institutions, structures of understanding and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent – that is, organised as a sexuality – but also privileged. Its coherence is always provisional, and its privilege can take several (sometimes contradictory) forms; unmarked, as the basic idiom of the personal and the social; or marked as a natural state; projected as an ideal or moral accomplishment; sense of rightness produced in contradictory manifestations; often unconscious, immanent to practice or institutions; not restricted to sex but is also embedded in the whole field of social relations.

6 O’Brien (1977, 110, as quoted in Cadigan 1998) lists a number of societies which have practiced woman-to-woman marriage. By region they are: (1) West Africa (mainly Nigeria) – Yoruba, Ekiti, Bunu, Akoko, Yagba, Nupe, Ibo, Ijaw, and Fon (or Dahomeans); (2) South Africa (especially the Transvaal) – Venda, Lovedu, Pedi, Hurutshe, Zulu, Sotho, Phalaborwa, Narene, Koni, and Tawana; (3) East Africa – Kuria, Iregi, Kenye, Suba, Simbiti, Ngoreme, Gusii, Kipsigis, Nandi, Kikuyu, and Luo; and (4) Sudan – Nuer, Dinka, and Shilluk.

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Yaliwe Clarke

Yaliwe Clarke is the Interim Director of the African Gender institute and a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her PhD research investigates the micro-politics of women's ‘peace activism’ in northern Uganda. She is also interested in notions of respectable femininity, marriage, pleasure, and (hetero)sexuality in Zambia.