“Please Give Me My Voice”: Women’s Out-of-Court Divorce in a Secondary City in Senegal

Abstract Divorce is not uncommon among Muslims in Senegal and tends to take place outside of court, even if the Senegalese Family Code has made out-of-court divorce illegal. Yet little is known about how women in particular may obtain divorce outside of the court. This article provides ethnographic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Islamic Africa
Main Author: Bouland, Annelien (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2020
In: Islamic Africa
Further subjects:B Women
B Family law
B Divorce
B Tradition
B Senegal
B Islamic Law
B Kinship
B Custom
B Gender
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Summary:Abstract Divorce is not uncommon among Muslims in Senegal and tends to take place outside of court, even if the Senegalese Family Code has made out-of-court divorce illegal. Yet little is known about how women in particular may obtain divorce outside of the court. This article provides ethnographic material on the way women divorce out-of-court, and the repertoires of justification they draw on. In line with scholarly work on women’s use of Islamic courts in other countries the article foregrounds women’s agency, yet in a different out-of-court context. First, it is shown that women draw on multiple, gendered, repertoires. Second, it is argued that because family members play a central role in the divorces studied, the analysis of women’s agency requires an attentiveness to kin and women’s “kinwork”.
ISSN:2154-0993
Contains:Enthalten in: Islamic Africa
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/21540993-01101012