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| Title: | Women's Resistance in 'Customary' Marriage: Tanzania's Runaway Wives |
| Author: | Mbilinyi, Marjorie J. |
| Book title: | Forced Labour and Migration: Patterns of Movement within Africa |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Pages: | 211-254 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Tanzania United Kingdom |
| Subjects: | colonialism migration women migrants marriage women Cultural Roles Marital Relations and Nuptiality Labor and Employment |
| Abstract: | This study is concerned with gender relations and the intervention of the British colonial State in the labour reservoir of Rungwe District in colonial Tanganyika (today mainland Tanzania). The author uses native court records to illuminate the problematic nature of the concept of 'customary marriage'. The main part of the paper examines the intervention of the colonial State in supporting customary marriage practices which operated to the advantage of the elders in a strongly patriarchal society, where social bonds were formed by the exchange of women for cattle. The colonial State's use of the concept of 'customary marriage' was aimed at social control as regards women. In this connection, the migration ('running away') of women was seen as a challenge to the colonial State, colonial chiefs, and male elders. The colonial State's response to this form of women's resistance was to institute a 'panterritorial' policing - a system of social control specific to women - extending to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and aimed at upholding parental authority over women. State intervention led to change in the definition of 'marriage politics' from adultery, runaways and therefore compensation to divorce with husbands demanding return of bridewealth not wives. Notes, ref. |