Walking Marriage" and "Female Husbands": A Comparative Study of Gender Relations Between the Mosuo of China and the Igbo of Nigeria
This article compares two unconventional marriage/gender practices: the "walking marriage" (zouhun) of China's Mosuo people and the "female husband" institution among Nigeria's Igbo people. Marriage typically involves a man bringing a woman into his household, but these two cases reverse or partially invert that pattern, revealing strong matrilineal influences. Among the Mosuo, men visit women secretly at night without forming shared households, property, or paternal responsibility; children belong to the mother's family, and men function mainly as biological progenitors while women serve as the true "social parents." The Igbo "female husband" practice similarly allows women to assume husband roles, altering conventional gender authority within marriage and kinship. Drawing on historical and cultural background of both ethnic groups—the Mosuo's geographic isolation near Lugu Lake and the Igbo's decentralized, village-based social organization in southeastern Nigeria—the study argues that both traditions demonstrate how enduring customs can produce family structures where women hold central social and parental authority, challenging patriarchal norms dominant elsewhere.
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