Tenacious women: clinging tobanjahousehold production in the face of changing gender relations in Malawi

Abstract

This article examines major shifts in southern Malawi's matrilineal societies at the household level that have contributed to the intensification of women's agricultural workload and the undermining of their relative economic autonomy. Slave trading and incursions from militant, patrilineal invaders weakened women's authority in the pre‐colonial period while missionary activities and capitalist administrative practices further eroded women's control of vital resources and robbed them of family labour during the colonial period. The author argues that the tenacity with which women in these matrilineal, largely uxorilocal communities cling to individual family production rather than participating in gender specific collaborative forms of production signals a last defence against the historical erosion of their economic and political power. Their insistence on banja production is linked to their need to optimize and maintain control over the benefits of this production at the household level.