Women in traditional and pre-colonial societies
Before we had cities, factories or wages as we know them, who grew the food, fetched the water, and raised the children? In most of Southern Africa, the answer was women. In this lesson we honour and understand their story: the roles women played in traditional, pre-colonial societies — as the backbone of subsistence farming, fetching water and firewood, rearing children and processing food; how culture shaped their position through customs like the gendered division of labour, bride wealth (lobola), patrilineal inheritance, land restrictions, taboos and myths; and how colonialism — through migratory labour, unequal wages, land laws, neglected schooling and commercial farming — changed and mostly deepened the burden women carried.
By the end you should be able to (NSSCO Development Studies 6.1):
- Discuss the roles of women in traditional societies with reference to labour, food production, farming and family welfare (women as the backbone of subsistence farming, water and firewood collection, child-rearing and food processing)
- Discuss the impact of culture on women's position in society: traditional values, customs and practices, taboos and myths (inheritance customs, bride wealth/lobola, the gendered division of labour, and restrictions on land ownership)
- Assess the impact of colonialism on the position of women in society: in relation to education, land entitlement, wages, labour, migratory labour (men leaving for mines and towns while women ran the homesteads), and commercial farming