Female Singlehood and Urban Space in Lesotho

This paper explores the complex interactions between gender roles/relations in Lesotho and the (re)structuring of urban space in its rapidly growing capital city, Maseru. It focuses specifically on the increasing creation of an urban space, social and physical, occupied by single female household-heads, many of them rural-urban migrants, and the significance of this for women's autonomy in a patriarchal society. Macro-economic shifts in Lesotho have altered the gender division of paid work, and are influencing patterns of urbanization. For example, the arrival of world market factories reliant on cheap female labour has facilitated the occupation by some women of a physical urban space distributed by the market, rather than according to patriarchal kinship norms, providing them with the cash to rent a room or buy a plot of land on which to build. Single, independent women have thus found a space beyond private patriarchal relations, although the risks of sexual harassment and rape serve as constant reminders of male power. Female singlehood remains subject to the public patriarchy of the state and capitalism, however, financial and social independence from men often coming only at the price of subjection to industrial capital. The new space single women are inhabiting is also inherently unstable, its form and status subject to multiple and continual contestation. Case-study material illustrates the complex strategies women may adopt as they resiliently create and recreate their space and work towards a transformation of gender relations. Review of Southern African Studies Volume 3 No. 2 December 1999, pp. 75-10