Rural-Urban Linkages: Masvingo's Double-Rooted Female Heads of Households

Muzvidziwa, Victor N.

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Title:	Rural-Urban Linkages: Masvingo's Double-Rooted Female Heads of Households
Author:	Muzvidziwa, Victor N.
Year:	1997
Periodical:	Zambezia (ISSN 0379-0622)
Volume:	24
Issue:	2
Pages:	97-123
Language:	English
Notes:	biblio. refs.
Geographic terms:	Zimbabwe Southern Africa
Subjects:	rural-urban relations female-headed households Urbanization and Migration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues gender Women heads of households Masvingo (Zimbabwe) urban housing Right of property Cultural Roles Family Life Marital Relations and Nuptiality urbanization
External link:	https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/AJA03790622_283
Abstract:	Urban-rural linkages constituted an important, ongoing survival strategy for women in Masvingo, a town of some 52,000 inhabitants (1992) in the southern part of Zimbabwe. Based on fieldwork in 1994-1995, including in-depth interviews with 50 female heads of households in Rujeko and Mucheke, Masvingo's only low-income, high density areas, the author describes the situation of women struggling to remain in town and the strategies they adopted to this end, notably the deliberate investment in rural-urban networks. Without a foot in the rural area, most women would not have been able to stay in the town. The double-rooted strategy pursued by many women involved a reciprocal flow of goods and services between kin in both rural and urban directions. Kin also influenced women's mobility, especially their initial move to and arrival in town. Women used kinship networks to counter the structural constraints imposed by central and local-level bureaucracies and maximize their chances of surviving in town. While many women acknowledged experiencing hard times, only those categorized by the author as 'burnt out' (in contrast to 'hanging on', 'coping' and 'climbing out of poverty') conceded that they might be forced to go back to the village. Bibliogr., sum.