Gender Culture and Patriarchy

The women who were interviewed in this study represent the views of some professional Basotho women who are caught up in private and public discrimination. In Lesotho, many women face discrimination in their family life, but the same scenario also applies to them in schools. Women's life stories are centred on a series of construction providing a general overview about who they are. But in another important sense, they also provide clear perspectives about how cultural and patriarchal values and norms influence their choices and decisions in the way they live. In Lesotho, culture and patriarchy go hand in hand and do not seem to favour women. These two components are reinforced by families and households, the social environment and government bureaucracy. Consequently, women find themselves in a dilemma in terms of life strategies because they are pulled in different directions by contradictory issues and ideologies present in their lives. As a result, they are consciously forced to construct identities that match with their ways of living in their own specific social and cultural environments.