What kind of woman are you? : Zimbabwean migrant women in Australia negotiating the politics of dress

This paper analyses the power of dress in defining and redefining identities for continental African women in the diaspora. It uses data from a qualitative study with Shona-Zimbabwean migrant women in Australia – about their understandings of sexuality, to explore the significance of dress in socio-cultural constructions of Shona womanhood. The focus of the paper is twofold: first, is a concern with how dress is articulated in constructions of “dignified womanhood” in Shona culture. In this regard, the paper explores the acceptance and rejection of certain types of “western-style” dress in the reproduction of Shona and Australian gender and sexual scripts. Second, the paper is concerned with the contradictions and challenges of negotiating the politics of dress in cross-cultural contexts. Considering that dress practice is contextual (e.g., given meaning in the socio-cultural context within which it is practiced) the data we present exposes the paradox of dress, and womanhood, when dress ideals between the women’s culture of origin and the host, Australian, culture seem to conflict. In the end, our discussion of ‘dress’ in this paper is about more than just clothing, or ‘fashion’, or even the social meaning of dress, it is about body politics: how the Shona woman’s body is regulated, managed and socially inscribed through dress. It is also about how dress is used as a contestation and subversion of some of the gender-scripts of “proper” Shona womanhood when they are expected to re/negotiate their sexual and gender identity in the ‘new’ diaspora