Narratives of Shona Divorcees: Decolonial Challenges to African Feminist Thought

Although marriage was highly valued in Shona traditions, missionary Christianity introduced a much more rigid, monogamous marriage in which women were domesticated as (house)wives and mothers and economically dependent on their breadwinner husbands. African feminisms, which emerged in response to Western feminist hegemony, have not always adequately interrogated this norm of marriage and its impact on women. Sidelining single women, especially divorced ones, in the African feminist agendas in the 1980s meant that many social worlds and realities remained hidden from scrutiny. This article asks: What does it mean for African feminist understandings of “African women” when the voices of divorced women are foregrounded? How do these voices complicate and challenge commonly accepted ideas relating to gender, marriage and family life in contemporary Africa? To answer these critical questions, I discuss the narratives of 44 divorced Shona women, which were gathered through life story interviews conducted during fieldwork carried out between August 2023 and March 2024 in areas of Zimbabwe predominantly occupied by the Shona people. By foregrounding the voices of divorced women, the article expands African feminist discourses and studies of singlehood through a decolonial lens.