Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the way in which women are legitimated in Zimbabwean politics and the patriarchal discourses surrounding these women. It argues that women in politics exist in a paradoxical and dichotomous existence characterised by stereotypical imagery and perceptions of femininity.

Paper long abstract:

Zimbabwe's political history has not been kind to women. Since the City Youth League bus boycotts of the 1950s in colonial Salisbury Rhodesia to the post-independence period, women in politics have been placed in the paradoxical and dichotomous existence of being stereotypically labelled as 'immoral prostitutes' on the one hand, and 'virtuous mothers' on the other. In examining the paradoxes and dichotomies pertaining to women in politics, this paper will bring into focus the social and cultural factors which both reinforce and perpetuate this political discourse on women and in so doing unravel other contextual paradoxes which have come to define the way in which we think about African societies as simultaneously inhabiting both tradition and modernity, as well as the sacred (religion) and the secular (politics). The paper will employ post-colonial theorist, Homi Bhabha's, influential concept of hybridity. The paper is based on ethnographic material obtained in the capital city of Harare in 2017 and 2018, consisting of participant observation, in-depth interviews with female parliamentarians and aspiring politicians, as well as focus group research.

This paper aims to critically examine the ways in which women are legitimated in politics and the gendered discourses that surround women in politics.