18. Women in West Africa vol. 2

Universal Power by Desirée Delgado licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic (I wanted to stick to this image)


I left the most exciting part to latter posts! Have a look at this! I couldn't believe what I was reading... This is from the same article as the one in my 11th post.

"In many West African chiefdoms and states, women themselves could pay bride price and "marry" other women." (p. 233)

Amazing isn't it? It continues:

"A female husband builds a house for her "wife" and arranges for a male consort to get her pregnant. By taking a wife, a woman assumes the status of head of household. By paying bridewealth for several such "wives", an ambitious West African woman could become the "father" of many children, establish control over a busy compound, and become rich and powerful." (p. 233)

Now do you still think power belongs only to men?

Harris, M. & Johnson, O. (2000). Cultural Anthropology. (Location not known): Ally and Bacon.
(the anthology doesn't indicate the location)

10. Gender Roles

Gender equality poster by leitza* licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

I've just come out of a TLL class in which one of our themes, gender, was discussed (in the 19th century Ottoman Empire). Then we compared it to today. I've been thinking of writing something about gender in history in many different societies and will definitely do so in the near future, but for now I just wanted to talk about what our teacher told us, a past experience of his (that means near past of course). To summarize, one day he was in a friend's house for a small cute birthday party, where some girls were preparing some meal and boys were sitting and chattering etc. My teacher, whom I regard as an extremely polite and tender person, couldn't just hang around and wanted to help the girls. When he said so in the kitchen, girls mocked him, saying "yaptın yine yapacağını! Geç içerde otur" (I wanted to write what exactly he's been told but couldn't say in English). This meant that girls should be in the kitchen and men should be in the living room or something. This explains A LOT about gender roles in our community. In my opinion, gender roles shouldn't be that strict and their limits so rigid. Nowadays so many women are employed (Sonja is one of them right!) and (not so) many men know at least something about housework. If it can be made as a mutual aid and an example of cooperation between genders, it is very sweet and kind for any man or woman to get the hands on the other's "assigned" role. It is so much deeper a subject to be written about just in one blog, but I wanted to begin from somewhere.