Women’s Precarity in the Late Colonial and Postcolonial Congo Pubblico

Standifer, Lauren (Fall 2017)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/nk322d33s?locale=it
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Abstract

This thesis examines how the status and precarity of women changed during the late colonial and early colonial period in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The first chapter focuses on Congolese perceptions of domestic violence, studied through the lens of colonial scholars who interviewed subjects about their views on marriage. These scholars situated descriptions of violence and fear within colonial ideologies in ways that minimized, concealed and misdescribed violence. The second chapter studies how colonial interventions in and presumptions about plural marriage, sex work and monogamous marriage left many women with fewer rights and protections in intimate partner situations. This study calls for a re-examination of how scholars discuss women’s situations and experiences of vulnerability in African contexts.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Marital Chastisement, or Being Beaten with a Lamp…………………. p. 1

Part I: “Girls Are Afraid Of...” Psychology and Domestic Cruelty in the Late Colonial Congo …p. 9

Part II: “For you, there was only marriage”: The increasing vulnerability of female romantic partners under colonialism ... p. 35

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………...p. 61

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………….p 63 

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  • English
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Parola chiave
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