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The Exaggerated Demise of Polygyny: Transformations in Marriage and Gender Relations in West Africa

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International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Population ((IHOP,volume 8))

Abstract

The West African region has the world’s highest rates of polygyny, the practice of one man marrying two or more wives. Many scholars once foresaw polygyny’s eventual demise, and indeed polygyny appears to be on the decline even in West Africa. The practice is adapting to social change within the region, however. Most notably, polygyny is being reshaped in West Africa’s cities, where men and women are bound by very different conventions than their rural counterparts with respect to gender relations, nuptiality, sexuality, and allegiance to kin. Urban polygyny has also been affected by modern notions of romantic love and companionate marriage, and by the informalization of marriage. At the same time, polygyny retains a powerful influence as a cultural institution despite its diminishing prevalence. This chapter considers polygyny’s ongoing reconfiguration amid sweeping changes in African marital norms and behaviors. Drawing from a range of social science data, including large-scale surveys and ethnographic research as well as analysis by demographers, sociologists and anthropologists, the chapter reviews the current state of polygynous marriage and surveys its ongoing transformation in West Africa.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample lists over 80% of pre-industrial societies as “socially polygynous” (Ember et al. 2007, p. 429).

  2. 2.

    Another common metric of polygyny, the proportion of married men in polygynous unions, is problematic to assess in these DHS reports, as relevant data on males were often omitted from early reports, while male respondents’ age ranges were inconsistent in later reports.

  3. 3.

    Chart 20.2 includes all countries in the region for which at least three DHS data points are available over a period of 15 or more years.

  4. 4.

    The lone West African country lacking a significant rural-urban polygyny disparity was Mauritania, where rural and urban polygyny rates were 11% and 12% respectively according to the 2001 DHS, the only such survey so far conducted in Mauritania.

  5. 5.

    Lesthaeghe et al. (1989, p. 329) describe the convergence of male and female ages at marriage as the “main threat to polygyny.”

  6. 6.

    Hertrich’s (2007, p. 20) review of survey data from the 1990s finds that up to 30% of southern African women aged 35–39 remained unmarried; the “rise in terminal celibacy” among South Africans leads Garenne (2016, p. 2561) to wonder whether marriage in South Africa might “simply disappear in the next century.”

  7. 7.

    While it affects women at younger ages than men, the imperative to marry applies irrespective of sex. “An unmarried adult of a certain age has no standing and inspires no trust,” S. Camara observes in southern Mali; “But free unions or unmarried cohabitation [concubinage] are equally inconceivable. Marriage is thus the sole normal path; it is an obligation, a necessity” (2002, p. 183–4; see also Kringelbach 2016, p. 171; Meillassoux 1981, p. 78).

  8. 8.

    Legal restrictions’ limited impact on West African polygyny is evidenced by its continued prevalence in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea despite polygynous unions having no legal standing in these countries.

  9. 9.

    The same demographic trend has been observed more generally throughout Africa (Lesthaeghe et al. 1989, p. 333).

  10. 10.

    In fact, DHS reports show sex ratios close to parity in West African countries, ranging from 91 males per 100 females in Niger to 99 males per 100 females in Côte d’Ivoire.

  11. 11.

    Not all women find such prospects appealing: Kringelbach highlights middle-class urban Senegalese women who marry Europeans rather than “risk being locked into a cycle of marriage, polygyny, divorce, and remarriage into polygyny” (2016, p. 162).

  12. 12.

    From 2010 to 2015, rapid urbanization characterized most countries of the region; the fastest annual urbanization rates were 2.1% in Mali and 3% in Burkina Faso (United Nations 2014).

  13. 13.

    In Dakar of the 1950s and 1960s, Le Cour Grandmaison labeled the non-coresidential union “plurilocal polygamy” (1971, p. 211), while Aryee referred to the “duolocality of spouses” in 1970s Accra as a “traditional Ga practice” (1978, p. 375).

  14. 14.

    This phenomenon resonates with a long-running anthropological debate over whether a polygynous union constitutes one domestic unit or several (Clignet and Sween 1981; Murdock 1949; Sudarkasa 1982).

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  1. Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    Bruce Whitehouse

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Whitehouse, B. (2018). The Exaggerated Demise of Polygyny: Transformations in Marriage and Gender Relations in West Africa. In: Riley, N., Brunson, J. (eds) International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes. International Handbooks of Population, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_20

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