This paper explores the lived experiences of breadwinning women in urban Northern Tanzania, challenging the pervasive masculinity bias that frames economic provision as an inherently masculine role. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it examines how women-often single, separated, or in long-distance partnerships-elude patriarchal control, not through overt resistance but by cultivating alternative forms of authority grounded in motherhood, relational embeddedness, and economic contribution. Many do so by remaining (ostensibly) single, strategically distancing themselves from a patriarchal framework that associates femininity with submissiveness. Instead, they embody a socially valued femininity centred on provision and communal care-a model this paper terms breadwinner femininity. In a context where motherhood often takes precedence over marriage as a marker of social adulthood, these women assert a respected womanhood rooted in leadership, responsibility and care. Their economic strength is frequently invested in their children's well-being and education, enhancing their moral authority and garnering communal respect. Drawing on African feminist perspectives, the paper critiques rigid gender binaries and advocates for more plural, relational and female-affirming models of power. Ultimately, it argues for an expanded gender analysis of the intersection of seniority, economic strength, and caregiving as key to understanding feminine power and social legitimacy in African contexts and beyond.
In this article, I discuss gender with a focus on kinship, language and relationality. Based on fieldwork conducted in Zambezia, Mozambique, I argue that concepts such as gender fluidity and performativity, which were developed by Judith Butler and which remain hegemonic in feminist and queer theory, are inadequate for making sense of non-sexual, non-queer, heteronormative socialities. Building on the work of Ifi Amadiume and Oy & egrave;r & oacute;nke Oy & ecaron;w & ugrave;m & iacute;, this article critiques the continued marginalisation of the frameworks these authors have advanced, which help make better sense of gender relations beyond sex and sexuality. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data on the cases of male 'wives' of Karanga kings and a female mwene (ruler) who inherited a putative male position, the paper showcases apparently gendered naming that is not tied to sex or identity but to relational roles within kinship structures, elucidated through the terminology used to name the social roles. These examples illustrate gender fluidity understood differently, allowing for the coexistence of social and biological genders that shift according to social, political and kinship relations. Rather than queering gender, these cases showcase how gender can exist through a multitude of interactions, attributions and understandings other than binary opposition or sexual identity. This critique upsets hegemonic feminist theoretical frames and underscores the emancipatory possibilities that a deeper engagement with African kinship and relational terminologies can provide for understanding and theorising about gender relations on the continent.
