Woman-to-Woman Marriage: Practices and Benefits in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This article examines the various forms of woman-to-woman marriage in sub-Saharan Africa and discusses how each form can or could have been used by a woman to advance her social and/or economic status in society. Woman-to- woman marriage may also be beneficial to the persons involved other than the woman who initiates the marriage (the so-called female husband). The motivations of the other participants are also examined. Cross-culturally, women take wives under three circumstances, all of which enhance the status of the female husband: 1) barren women take wives to gain rights over children produced; 2) rich women accumulate wives to gain prestige and wealth in the same way men do through polygyny; and 3) in societies where women possess the right to have a daughter-in-law, a woman without a son may take a wife to give her a non-existent son.