The Female Doorway : Minyanka women burdened and empowered by male out-migration

Abstract

This thesis deals with the way women in Minyanka society are being forced to take on responsibilities that,in former times, were exclusively by their men. for the Minyanka people, control over productive resources has traditionally been centralized in the hands of the head of the household; almost always the husband. it'is been the man of the house who's been in charge of economics decisions and the supervision of family affairs.But nowadays, with such large numbers of men absent from their home villages in search of wage labour, the entire complex of customary gender roles is seriously disrupted. In fact, this constitutes one of the major challenges confronting the nation state. this thesis will, for the most part, focus on what happens to a particular woman after her husband has, more or less permanently, left the family. My main informant is a mother of nine children. I have sought, in my writing - and in the accompanying video - to examine and depict her everyday lifeworld, especially those aspects of it which pertain to the theme of altered gender roles.