WHERE WOMAN COMMANDS

If we now return from the West Coast to Eastern Africa we find on the northern confines of Abyssinia a strange case of the subjection of men, which Munzinger has described in his Ostafrikanische Studien (275-338). The Beni Amer are a tribe of Mohammedan shepherds among whom "the sexes seem to have exchanged rôles, the women being more masculine in their work." Property is legally held in common, wherefore the men rarely dare to do anything without consulting their wives. In return for this submission they are treated with the utmost contempt:

"For every angry word that the husband utters he is compelled to pay a fine, and perhaps spend a whole rainy night outdoors till he has promised to give his weaker half a camel and a cow. Thus the wife acquires a property of her own, which the husband never is allowed to touch; many women have in this way ruined their husbands and then left them. The women have much esprit de corps; if one of them has ground for complaint, all the others come to her aid…. Of course the man is always found in the wrong; the whole village is in a turmoil. This esprit de corps demands that every woman, whether she loves her husband or not, must conceal her love and treat him contemptuously. It is considered disgraceful for her to show her love to her husband. This contempt for men goes so far that if a wife laments the death of her husband who has died without issue, her companions taunt her…. One often hears women abuse their husbands or other men in the most obscene language, even on the street, and the men do not dare to make the least retort." "The wife can at any time return to her mother's house, and remain there months, sending word to her husband that he may come to her if he cares for her."