Antecedentes al estudio del estereotipo

Polygyny is a type of marital relationship where one man has more than one wife. It is still a common practice among the Maasai though the practice is declining due to

several factors such as economic and education levels. Polygyny is tied to economic ability, social status and creating more possibilities for women to get married (cf. Bingham 2011, 32-34).

Asked how many wives a man should marry and given a choice between one, two, three or more or as many as he likes, the majority, 78%, choose the latter. This percentage is of 127/163 respondents. This indicates a high rate of approval for polygyny among the Maasai across the age groups and among male and female respondents. The age distribution ranged from between 15 and 70 as displayed in Table 2. It further indicates that the Maasai are a polygynous community. The upholding of polygynous type of marriage was based on its perception as a sign of wealth and therefore, socio-economic status and the respect associated with it. The results are displayed below (Table 23):

Table 23: How Many Wives Should a Man Marry? N=163 % No Response 7 5 One 13 8 Two 5 3 Three or more 6 3.5 As many as he likes 127 78

The number you can feed and afford 3 1.5 The first has priority you must die in the house

of the first

2 1

TOTAL 163 100

Marriage is mandatory for all Maasai. An unmarried person in the Maasai society has a low status. An unmarried person was referred to by 6 respondents as an outcast or a person without honour (orkirikoi or olkirigoi). This kind of peson will be despised. He is associated with laziness and as lacking the skills to manage family affairs. The

Maasai also practice a type of social polyandry, though declining due to contemporary social set up. This is where a woman marries not just her husband, but the entire age group. Bingham calls it “shared sex among age sets” stating that:

Another tradition still in practice among some Maasai today is shared sex among age sets. Since the Maasai men are grouped together in age categories, when an older man [sic] buys a new wife, no matter her age, she can be shared by any man in her husband’s age group for sexual relations. (Bingham (2011, 4).

Saitoti (1988) adds that “Age organization provides an ethic of behaviour, ordering relationships between Maasai according to several distinct principles of respect ‘enkanyit’, emphasized and reinforced by supernatural sanctions” (p. xx).

Bingham (2011, 4), perhaps, is looking at this issue from the viewpoint of the school of thought of some missionaries whom Falen (2008) states that, “misunderstood African customs of marriage payments, viewing these transactions as the purchase of a bride” (p. 52). At the same time the missionaries “struggled with establishing the notions of romantic love and individualism in the face of what they perceived as the unromantic, duty-oriented style of African marriage” (p. 52). Falen adds that:

the strongest and most enduring point of tension has been the question of polygyny (Barrett 1968c; Hastings 1973, 1994), which speaks not only to the history of Christian missions, but also to perceptions of Africa and the identities of African people. Today it remains one of the most heated issues in African congregations. (Falen 2008, 52)

Apel (1999) records that when some Maasai were asked “what God thought about polygyny” (p. 31), a slight majority of those who answered 16/28 (57%) believed that God approved or at least accepted polygyny. Most of the women 23/33 (67%) attended church services at least once a week. All those who responded indicated that the church did not approve of polygyny. This implies that there is a gap between what the churches teach about polygyny and what Maasai church women believe about God. The findings of the current study reveal that a large number of respondents have no problem with polygyny, regardless of their affiliation to Christianity. Polygyny is closely tied to economy. According to Höschele (2006) “A man with one wife can never acquire the wealth and status associated with hundreds of cows, for it is the wife and children who take care of the cattle” (p. 1). Secondly, it is prestigious and provides an opportunity for women to get married.

Coast (2006) asserts that the Maasai are the best known pastoralists in the world. She reviews the evidence linking pastoralism to polygyny. However, she notes that there are factors that contribute to the reduction of the prevalence of polygyny among the Maasai. She cites increasing levels of formal education, socio-economic factors, in- fighting between both wives and husband, increasing expenses of education of many children, and increasing expense of brideweath, especially for a more educated wife. However, in contrast, both Tarayia (2004) and Hodgson (2011), though writing about Maasai of Tanzania, cite cases where Maasai wives take care of their co wives’ children when the other wife has to be away for one reason or the other.

Coast (2001, 91) illustrates, in Table 24 below, the mean number of wives per husbands compared to age:

Table 24: Number of Wives Reported by Husband's Age (from Spencer 1988) Husband’s age range Number of wives Wives/husband

1 2 3 4 5 6

57-70 (n= 128) 48 41 23 12 1 1 2.08 41-55 (n= 111) 68 35 6 1 1 0 1.51 26-40 (n= 84) 60 19 4 0 0 0 1.33

18-25 (n= 14) 14 0 0 0 0 0 1.00

(Coast 2001, 90) There appears to be three marked “jumps” in the mean number of wives per currently married men, at ages 40-44, 50-54 and above age 69. It is not clear whether these jumps are a product of selectivity, are random, or represent a trend.