Shona Indigenous Religion and the Flexibility and Complementarity of Gender Roles as a Platform for Cultivating Gender Equality in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Various sectors of African life, religion included, have been excoriated for ascribing men, positions, and roles of significance and affluence while relegating women to positions of inferiority, marginalization, invisibility, and second-class citizenry. Such a state of affairs is untenable, especially in the context of Africa’s pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Goal Number 5 which emphasizes gender equality. Through the Afrocentricity (Molefi Kete Asante) and Africana womanist (Clenora Hudson-Weems) lenses and examples from the religious beliefs and practices of the Shona of Zimbabwe, this chapter bemoans that the subject of gender roles has not been critically explored, but has largely been accorded a hugely outsider and one-sided gaze. Drawing from fieldwork and literature on Shona’s religious beliefs and practices, the chapter underscores that in this ethnic group’s religion, many religious positions and their associated roles were flexible to allow the participation, dual or separate, of both men and women, ensuring equality between the sexes. Such was the case with religious positions and roles of territorial and family ancestors, spirit mediums, religious attendees, and traditional healers, all of which were not gender specific. Where equality between genders seemed out of the question, complementarity became central, as each of the genders undertook different but complementary roles, bringing both sexes to the limelight. Although there are studies that have shown that African women only found a space to subvert patriarchy through spirit possession, this chapter’s premise is that despite such cases, even away from spirit possession, Shona women notably had considerable and respectable space. The chapter argues that the realization of SDG Goal Number 5 in Zimbabwe, which emphasizes gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, does not necessarily lie in the abandonment of religious gender roles, but in an informed embracing of their fluid and complementary nature.