Shameful or shameless? Anxieties about mothers and women's autonomy on the Central African Copperbelt, 1956–1964

Abstract

AbstractThis article deals with anxiety about and the shaming of modern urban mothers and wives on the mines of the late colonial Central African Copperbelt. Women's various labours and public presence lead to ambivalent depictions, such as the ‘careless mother’, that were part of a broader array of anxieties about women's autonomy on the mines. However, urban women rejected such labelling and resisted the isolation of modern motherhood. Instead, they created networks of mutual support and solidarity, they publicly shamed their failing breadwinners, supported one another financially, emotionally and through expressing solidarity in the press, thus seeking economic independence where possible.