Keywords
Ubuntu resistance
gender
feminism
bridal showers
bridal counseling
Gaborone
Botswana
Abstract
This article’s analysis of data from Gaborone Bridal showers used theories of agency propounded by Ashivat and Saba Mohammed, drawn from religious women. They highlight “agency as resistance that might also appear as “negotiation with oppressive social structures, and partial compliance” thereby indicating that “docility does not necessarily compromise agency” (Ashivat, 2016:67). Gaborone Bridal Showers are undoubtedly about women encouraging and accompanying another woman to enter a very patriarchal institution: heterosexual marriage, hence its agentic angle has to be interrogated carefully. The analysis of data collected from Gaborone Bridal Showers asked the following questions from interview guides: How does go laya (counselling of a bride) in the cultural setting and the urban-based bridal showers of Gaborone construct and reconstruct gender? How do they create new female spaces? Granted that they still buy a woman household items and that some voices are outright conservative, there is sufficient evidence-based conclusions that Gaborone Bridal Showers are still embrace patriarchy. Yet the analysis of the context and content of the Gaborone bridal shower, with its insistence on “outright freedom” and that every woman is welcome and must be free to talk, regardless of age and marital status, creates an inclusive space that resists equating women’s full humanity with heterosexual marriage. Even the most conservative voices acknowledged radical inclusivity as a change brought by Gaborone Bridal Showers in the go laya female space. Content wise, evidence-based findings indicate iconoclastic twists in go laya—insisting that a married woman must keep her voice, keep her friends, wear what she wants; hold the man accountable financially, insist on faithfulness, insist on shared household chores, watch out for intimate partner violence, enjoy her sexuality and pursue her profession.