Establishing stable beginnings through alternative channels: voluntary association membership, marriage, and women's socioeconomic welfare in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

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Periodical article

Title:	Establishing stable beginnings through alternative channels: voluntary association membership, marriage, and women's socioeconomic welfare in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Author:	Boswell, Kathryn V.
Year:	2016
Periodical:	Africa Today (ISSN 1527-1978)
Volume:	62
Issue:	3
Pages:	71-91
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Burkina Faso
Subjects:	marriage women financial management
External link:	https://muse.jhu.edu/article/610771
Abstract:	Obstacles to marriage have long occupied literature on marriage in sub-Saharan Africa. Many young women in urban Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, undergo this rite of passage despite financial constraints, but their marriages remain problematic from their perspective. Attainment of this new status through communally recognized means should leave them with feelings of socioeconomic security, yet many express the opposite. They link their insecurity to the conditions under which they married and use the terms manage cadeau and manage credit to describe marriages with undesirable beginnings. This paper examines how some use the resources available through voluntary associations and rotating credit groups in marriage to lay a strong foundation upon which successful marriages are built. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]