Image of Putting them in their place: “respectable” and “unrespectable” women in Zimbabwean gender struggles

Feminist Studies

Putting them in their place: “respectable” and “unrespectable” women in Zimbabwean gender struggles

Download PDF

In this article, I consider how women in the former colony of Southern Rhodesia and contemporary Zimbabwe were and still are defined as “respectable” or “unrespectable”. I go on to draw out the implications of such definitions of respectability for gender struggles in Zimbabwe. Occasional parallels are drawn with other post-colonial African states. This discussion encompasses three phases of Zimbabwean history: the colonial era (from about 1890 to the early 1960s); the liberation struggle period (late 1960s to independence in 1980); and the postcolonial and contemporary situation (1980 to the present). The role of women in the public and private spheres during these three phases is considered in order to show how definitions of respectability have shifted over time, with certain women gaining or losing respectability. I focus on the term “prostitute” and the ways in which it is used not only to describe sex workers, but as a marker to denote any supposedly “unrespectable” woman, particularly those who move into space that is considered to be male territory (Gaidzanwa, 1995). This “branding” is carried out by both men and women.

Detail Information
Publication Information
: Feminist Africa.,
Number of Pages
-
ISBN
-
Language
English
ISSN
-
Subject(s)
Feminist Africa
Postcolonial
Colonial
respectability
public sphere
Description
-
Citation
Other Information
Type
Article
Part Of Series
-
DOI Identifier
-
Related Publications

No Related Publications available

Comments