Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Independent Study Project

ISP time is more than half over now. I’ve done 12 interviews with polygamous women in the Bamako area about what it’s like living with one or more co-wives. Some of the questions, for example, were about how they divide up the housework and time with their husbands, how they feel about sharing their husbands with another woman (or two or three), and what their relationships with their husbands are like. It was fascinating. After that, each woman took a marital satisfaction survey. Only four of the women could speak French or read, so I had another Malian woman help me translate and record the others’ responses. Here’s a quick summary about the women I interviewed and what I learned:

Averages
Age: 45
# of co-wives: 1.58
Age at marriage: 17.4
Age difference between husband and wife: 10.33
# of living children: 4.25
Marital satisfaction percentile: 56.61

Interesting Info
Almost all of the women divided up tasks in a rotation based on cooking. Each wife was responsible for cooking for two days, and on those days she was also responsible for cleaning the house, making the husband’s bed, and spending the night with the husband. After her two days, the next wife would take two days, etc.

Most of the wives were fairly cooperative and helped each other out in various ways. They also considered the children of the other women as their own children.

Besides that, the goal of my project was basically to figure out what factors influence marital satisfaction for women in polygamous marriages. Based on the interviews, it seems like the three most important factors are the woman’s expectations about marriage, the behavior of the husband (specifically if he is abusive and/or if he shows preferential treatment to one wife over another), and the nature of the co-wive’s relationship.

So, that’s that, and hopefully I haven’t bored anyone to death. It really was pretty cool getting to talk to all the different women and hear what they had to say. One even told me that when co-wives don’t get along, “it’s like two hippopotamuses in one river.” Pretty remarkable. Now, it’s just writing and presenting that are left. Only a little over two weeks to go!

No comments: