| caption: |
women's role in social life |
| text: |
In all public activities, it may be noted, it was the men who figured. Girls made only their brief and formal appearances with their appropriate 'kienga'; married women had no part in public life at all. They never appeared in court in person, but were represented by a male relative. They could not enter the main hall of a morung; to do so was not taboo, but most immodest. No man could eat game killed by a woman. It was unclean, unnatural. Hunting was a man's job. (This taboo, with us, lasted just one week after I bought a shotgun. Meat was scarce; I was declared an exception on the seventh day.) The legal rights of women were almost none, and to all appearances men were paramount in Zemi society. And yet the women were the most powerful influence in it. |
