4 - Women's Authority: Female Coalitions, Politics, and Religion

Summary

This chapter is the first of four that look more closely at the evidence and the kinds of historical change that came about in women's lives and in the gendering of authority, politics, social roles, and work during the long periods of East-Central African history since the late first millennium BCE. The chapter begins by considering four themes: the sororal group in East-Central African history; the history of the gendering of social, political, and work roles; the differing encounters of political authority with women's authority over the long term in East-Central Africa; and gender in religion and religious thought.

The Sororal Group in Early East-Central African History

Of primary social-historical importance among the four themes of this chapter, and therefore considered first, is the history of a named matrifocal institution, the sororal group, through which women, back to the First Age of Farming in East-Central Africa, governed the pivotal social relations of their societies. Called *-bumba in the proto-Sabi and proto-Botatwe languages of the early first millennium CE, the same institution with the same name also existed in early periods in the Nyanja-Cewa societies. The sororal group consisted of adult sisters and their mother, with their mother's sisters and their adult daughters as further potential members.

Wherever more decentralized political organization prevailed into recent times among Sabi peoples, sororal groups formed the core coalitions of women around which villages operated.