Being Female in Swaziland

I’ve been promising this post for a while now. I have been putting it off until I was able to really think about it, because gender relations really shape this country and I want to make sure that my analysis is as accurate as possible, and also not shaded by anger or frustration. I’ve spent the last week pretty much alone in my hut relaxing, so I’m presently not angry and can try to keep my opinions out of this as much as possible. So, here we go: gender norms, gender roles, the value of women, and sexual harassment in Swaziland.

Gender Norms

When we were in training, we focused on gender norms a lot. The women have to wear skirts, cannot show our thighs, have to learn how to deal with unwanted attention from men, and have to learn how to deal with comments from women. For Americans, this was a shock and was met with a lot of resistance. We thought that Peace Corps was being overly cautions; we didn’t understand what the reality of life here for women is really like.

The first time it hit home for me was during a conversation with our bothishela (teachers). Our language teachers are all Swazis, and include both men and women. As a whole, they are very progressive, and don’t really represent the extremity of attitudes we would soon come to know so well in our rural communities. Our Program and Training Manager, Patrick, asked the men a question. He asked them if it was okay if a man were to walk up behind a beautiful woman he didn’t know in a grocery store and begin hugging and kissing her. To our shock, they all said yes. That was how men got to know beautiful women.

He then asked the women. They adamantly said no. They did not want to be touched or kissed by strangers, and they wanted their bodies to be their own and in their control, not in the control of unknown men. The men were angry with this answer from the women, and it led to tension in the group of bothishela. This is a common aspect of gender norms – men set the norm and women aren’t asked. When women are asked, their answer is ignored.

Another aspect of gender norms is fashion. I was talking to my babe (father) one evening. He was lamenting the number of young women that wear trousers now. He said it was much better when we controlled what they wear, but now we just let them dress as they like. I asked him who “we” are. He looked surprised, and told me that “we” means men. That’s right – men should be able to dictate how women dress. A volunteer friend of mine has a male Swazi friend who is super cool – I’ve met him, and he is one funny person. In one of their conversations, he told her that women have to dress conservatively in church or men cannot focus to pray. She asked him if he really couldn’t control himself, and his answer was no; the responsibility for men’s focus lies with women, not with men themselves. She told him that men should all have to wear blindfolds in that case. I agree with her!

Women are secondary to men. They obey, they dress according to how they are pressured, they deal with harassment silently, and they are raised to fulfill certain expectations. That is the norm. Men are in control, and women have to be pretty and obedient. This may go back to family roles and expectations.

Family Roles and Expectations

Family settings are where gender roles are most apparent to me. They seem to be similar across the board in Swaziland.

Men are the head of the family. If there are children, they are his. He is the only one who can file for divorce, and the only reasons acceptable are if she fails to give him children, she practices witchcraft (yes, that’s a thing here), or if she commits adultery. Polygamy is legal. Men make deals for lobola (dowry, paid in cows) with the fathers of the women, and she may or may not get a say in the marriage. Men make all the financial decisions, all the decisions about what the family is doing and when, and what his wife can or cannot do. It is legal and expected for men to beat their wives. It is actually insulting here to ask a man to work or to help his wife; he is so tired from being a man that all he can do is sit.

Women have children; do all the washing, cooking, and cleaning; earn most of the money; and obey their husbands without complaint. This is where some of the problems that I see come in. Women work long days in the markets selling vegetables, in the shops or restaurants, or in the fields. They bring the money home and hand it over. Studies have shown that when women decide how the money is spent the children benefit, but when men decide much more is spent on beer. I have seen that firsthand. It is frustrating to see. Women also get no say in how many children they have.

I visited a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) clinic in Matsapha. They said that family planning is a challenge. The easiest thing for women who don’t want more children to do is to get a birth control implant in her arm. The doctor we spoke to said that it is common to see women doing this without their husbands’ consent, and then the husbands drag them back in and demand that the implant be removed. Women cannot get the implants at a Swazi clinic without their husbands present, so many never get the opportunity. It is sad to see.

Family and home are where you should go to relax. For women, going home means the work is only about to get harder.

Value of Women

Women here are evaluated by men based on their value. This became apparent to me in a conversation I had with my 16-year-old bhuti (brother) and his friend. They were asking a lot about American women. His friend, who I will call here Ben, told me that he wanted to marry an American. I told him that I didn’t think he would like it very much, and explained that if you told an American woman that she was going to do the cooking, cleaning, working, and laundry while you sat at home and drank beer she would laugh at you and leave. He told me that he could do without those things – he only wanted one because they are so beautiful.

I explained that you cannot do what men do here – that is, walk up to a stranger, tell her you love her, and ask her to marry you. You have to meet her through friends, work, church, whatever, and get to know her first. He became very frustrated, and exclaimed: “But if I do not talk to her, I will have lost a beautiful woman who could be my wife! How will she know that I love her if I do not tell her?” I asked him how he knew he loved her – she could be the meanest person alive. He looked at me, and replied: “She is not. She is too beautiful for that.”

The value of women here is largely on beauty. White women are the most beautiful, which is frustrating – I have known some very pretty Swazi women. 98% of this country is Swazi, so white girls are few and far between; maybe we’re just assumed to be beautiful because we’re exotic. The secondary value of women is on virginity. She must be a virgin when she marries you. There is a test for this, which is still in practice today, although not widely.

You stand a woman on her head while she is naked. You pour milk down her vagina. Someone who knows how to read this will determine if she is a virgin based on how much milk will go and how soon it comes back out. I have a lot of opinions on this, but in the interest of not angering my boss, I will keep them to myself.

Women are valued based on how many children they produce, especially sons. They are valued by how good their cooking is, how good their cleaning is, and how obedient they are. For someone used to value being placed on education, intelligence, kindness, being opinionated, being driven, and maybe being attractive, this feels like an injustice. Different cultures, I guess.

Sexual Harassment

This is how I, an American female of 23 years of age with a college education, perceive sexual harassment. Men here would not agree with my assessment, as seen in the above example with the bothishela.

I have been harassed. In America, I would have called the police. I would have called a friend. I would have shouted at the guy and used language that my mother would not have been proud of. Depending on the scale, I may have filed assault charges or physically fought to get away. Here, in Swaziland, I am not encouraged to do any of those things.

I get comments daily. “I love you” and “I want to marry you” are the most common ones. Lately, I’ve had enough, so my responses are getting sassier: “Well, babe, that’s a problem, because I don’t want to marry you” or “Thank you, it is nice to hear you say you love me.” The thank you response has actually made some men angry – they expect me to tell them that I love them back. I will not be saying that. I also get told that I must marry them, they will die without me, I am so beautiful, I must be with them, and I must marry them and take them back to America. I don’t like these, but they are the least offensive.

Some are offensive. “I want to know what a white body looks like. Show me,” “I want to put my baby in you,” “I will love you quickly” (not a good thing, sir!), “I am coming to your homestead and we are making love tonight,” and “You owe me sons” are the ones that really piss me off. If you want to know what a white body looks like, watch Game of Thrones (or any primetime HBO show). I don’t want your baby and I definitely don’t want to sleep with you. Saying those things doesn’t work, however.

This is the worst part. Women don’t have wants and needs that matter. We do as we are told when we are told to do it by men. We dress modestly for them. We respond to harassment kindly so as not to offend them. They, in turn, do not acknowledge that we are thinking human beings, so when I say “I do not want you,” they hear a joke.

I have also been grabbed. Arm around shoulders, hand in hand, my wrist in his hand, my arm, my shirt, my shoulder. Everything has been grabbed. I used to try to diffuse the situation and get away. Now, I shamelessly make a scene, something Swazi women rarely do. By the way, they get harassed as much as we do. Last guy that grabbed my wrist was one unlucky guy. I started screaming: “DO NOT TOUCH ME. I DO NOT LIKE YOU. LET ME GO. NEVER TOUCH ME AGAIN.” He was caught so off-guard that he let me go, and it took him several seconds to be able to shout after my retreating back that he loved me and wanted to marry me. Screaming works, and it shocks them into letting go.

My biggest annoyance is when race starts to play a role. This is a typical conversation:

SWAZI: I want to marry you.
ME: Ngingekinga (I have a problem) because I do not want to marry you.
SWAZI: Haowu! You do not like black men?
ME: No, that is not the problem. I do not like you.
SWAZI: You don’t like black men. You are a racist.
ME: I have no problem with black men. You are a racist – you are only talking to me because I am white.
SWAZI: Black men cannot be racist! You are so racist.

Yes, sir, I am racist. THAT’S WHY I WILLINGLY LIVE IN A COUNTRY THAT IS 98% BLACK. This one makes me so mad.

The ultimate take away, here, is that women have no real opinions, they are there to please men, and men are infallible and when they get rejected it is due to racism. I could keep going for pages and pages, but I think this is enough to introduce what goes on here. It’s frustrating, but such is life here. Thank goodness I only have to deal with this for 19 more months – some women live this every day.