Women without men: gender and marginality in an Algerian town

bibliographic database
Line

Dissertation / thesis

Title:	Women without men: gender and marginality in an Algerian town
Author:	Jansen, Wilhelmina Helena Maria
Year:	1987
Pages:	301
Language:	English
City of publisher:	Leiden
Publisher:	Brill
ISBN:	9004083456
Geographic term:	Algeria
Subjects:	single women women dissertations (form)
Abstract:	Women without men hold a special position in Algerian society, where women in general are defined as socially, morally, economically and politically dependent on fathers, brothers and husbands. This study, based on fieldwork in an Algerian town, shows how widows, orphans, divorcees, and other women without men provide their own livelihood and how, in doing so, they are marginalized. By working as scrubbers in a bathhouse, washers of the dead, religious leaders, sorcerers, healers, midwives, prostitutes, domestic servants, traders, industrial labourers, or politicians they set themselves apart from other women and break the gender rules. Their marginality serves to set the norms for the feminine gender but at the same time it challenges these norms and the gender hierarchy of which they are part.