Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Feminists across various contexts have written extensively on the subject of ‘Woman’. Recently the question of difference; to account for the cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity among women themselves has become a highly contested issue in feminist theories. Tensions have ensued where ‘western feminisms’ have been criticised of bias that is embedded in the objectification of ‘different’ women often regarded as ‘other’; traditional therefore inferior. Several African feminists have also questioned ‘western’ concepts such as gender and their relevance to the African context. Womanhood; a set of socially defined attributes appropriate for women holds different meanings depending on the context in which it is defined. Drawing on decolonial feminist approaches, this qualitative study aims to understand the meaning of ‘womanhood’ from the perspective of unmarried Basotho women in Lesotho where womanhood is defined in terms of marriage. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty unmarried women from various contexts in Lesotho. As opposed to the ‘traditional’ definition that accounts for a single attribute woman as ‘wife’, unmarried Basotho women defined ‘womanhood’ in different ways that deconstructed fixed gendered categories. This study highlights the need to exercise caution when using western concepts to understand experiences of women in local contexts. In order to decolonise feminist scholarship, African feminisms need to re-construct conceptual and theoretical frameworks appropriate for analysing and understanding gender issues in African contexts.