Sexual Exploitation of Cult Women: The Challenges of Problematizing Harmful Traditional Practices in Africa from a Doctrinalist Approach

Abstract

Harmful traditional practices are probably the most severe menace to women's rights and the optimum realization of their development potential in contemporary African history. Over time, and in recent years in particular, community activists, women's rights campaigners, church missionaries and the state have tended increasingly to confront the problem of harmful traditional practices from a doctrinalist paradigm, which mainly emphasizes the prohibition and/or obliteration of the practices. This article highlights some of the critical problems and challenges triggered by the doctrinalist approach using an ethnographic analysis of the tradition of sexual exploitation of cult women among the Bangu. It concludes by making a case for a multitrack sociological approach and solution to the problem.