Power and Paradox: Authority, Insecurity and Creativity in Fon Gender Relations

This is an ethnographic study of contemporary gender relations among the Fon people, the dominant ethnic group in the South of the Republic of Benin, West Africa. Research was conducted in and around the Fon cultural capital of Abomey, where, like other African peoples, Fon engage in small-scale agricultural and commercial activities. The Fon hold a prominent place in African studies for their traditional Vodun (Voodoo) religion. They are also well-known in the historical and gender literature for their precolonial female ministers and soldiers. Through an account of contemporary Fon gendered power strategies, highlighted by male perspectives on female power, the present study offers an important ethnographic update to this body of knowledge, as well as to the dialogue between Western and African feminisms, and to cross-gender research methodology.

This study acknowledges Western feminist perspectives in identifying Fon women's disadvantages in access to wealth and authority. Paradoxically, in spite of Fon women having less money, few leadership positions, and heavy labor burdens, they rarely dispute their structural positions. Instead, they use their sexuality, kin networks, marital ambiguity, and supernatural threats to subvert their lovers' and husbands' control. This book offers a detailed explanation of these informal avenues of power. This work rejects normative notions of power that label the Fon and other African societies "patriarchal," since this term establishes rigid, a priori assumptions of female subordination that are not necessarily true to Fon people's understandings of gender relations. This work contributes to African feminist literature by recognizing women's unofficial strategies for competing with men, while also drawing on postmodern sensibilities in constructing a model of power that allows for a fluid, negotiable, and unfinished quality to contests between the genders.

The description of women's use of sexuality and unofficial power should inspire dialogue about feminism and cultural relativity. The unique methodology demonstrates the role a male researcher can play in understanding women. Preferential access to men's lives afforded the author insight into the fears and anxieties men hold about women, revealing that they perceive the same women's powers as those identified by many female researchers.