Asante Queen Mothers in Ghana

The queen mothers of Asante are linked together with chiefs in a dual-gender system of leadership. The symbol of authority and leadership in Asante is a stool (like a throne in England). Throughout the polities of Asante, each queen mother occupies her own stool, and each chief occupies his own stool, representing the authority of chieftaincy in a town or a paramountcy. This political model shapes Asante like a pyramid: queen mothers and chiefs of towns and villages at the base, paramount queen mothers and chiefs at the next level with authority over those of towns and villages, and the king of Asante, the Asantehene, and the queen mother of Asante, the Asantehemaa, at the top ruling over all of Asante. The king of Asante occupies the Golden Stool, the symbol of the Asante nation, which holds the souls of the Asante people according to popular belief. Although the position of queen mother has survived challenges, the relative salience of specific features of her authority has varied. Colonialism ignored queen mothers, and yet Yaa Asantewaa led a war and became a symbol of Asante identity. When the global women’s movement provided inspiration, queen mothers joined together to reclaim their authority.

Women in Cameroon

Cameroon is a nation-state in West Central Africa. Historical evidence about the precolonial period has revealed the diverse ways women valued their motherhood and fertility, knowledge of agriculture production, membership in secret societies, and their role in transitioning deceased women and men through dance and ritual. Women exercised varying levels of power and experienced a spectrum of belonging as wives, mothers, concubines, slaves, queen mothers, and political intermediaries. Near the turn of the 19th century, political centralization and the expansion of long-distance trade produced new forms of inequality for women as wealth became more concentrated in the hands of elite men who sought to control women’s labor and sexuality. With colonial rule and postcolonial nationhood in the 20th century, Cameroonian women were increasingly integrated into a capitalist political economy that supported local patriarchal authority, changed women’s relationships to land, and engendered new socioeconomic inequalities. At the same time, women worked to check gendered disempowerment through secret societies, cooperative groups, schooling, religious conversion, changes in marriage and family structure, entrepreneurship, and new avenues for political engagement. In so doing, Cameroonian women transformed gender roles, struggled against new forms of discrimination, and altered lines of difference among themselves.

Bereaved Mothers and Masculine Queens: The Political Use of Maternal Grief in 1–2 Kings

Recent research demonstrates that maternal grief functions paradigmatically to epitomize despair and sorrow in the Hebrew Bible. These literary uses of maternal grief reinforce the stereotype of womanhood, defined by devotion to children and anguish at their loss. In 1–2 Kings, narratives about unnamed bereaved mothers are used politically to create a contrast with named biblical queens who lose their sons but never grieve for them. Although 1–2 Kings names the queen mothers alongside the male rulers, these mothers have no agency or when they do, they act more like men than women. Neo-Assyrian inscriptions attest the masculinity of royal female power, and this article argues that conceptions of royal female power in Judah were similar. By contrasting the masculine queens with stereotyped “real men” and “real women,” traditional gender performances literarily overcome the institution of queenship. While the queens are polemicized, unnamed mothers emerge as the female heroes of Kings. Royal female power is demoted beneath reproductive ability and emotional responses to children, while the gender fluidity of royal power is circumscribed.

3. Women and dynastic power

Dynasties took shape in very different ways, yet they all viewed government first and foremost as a male prerogative. Only rarely did women preside over the council and lead armies into war. No lasting examples of matriarchy can be found in the annals of dynastic history, but queens did rule. These queens-regnant were weighed down not only by the substantial burdens of kingship: they were wedged in by the tensions between their gender role and the requirements of power holding. While queens-regnant remained the exception, powerful women were almost always present around the throne. ‘Women and dynastic power’ asks where, when, and why women rose to power, and examines the roles that women have played in dynasties around the world as queens-regnant, queen-mothers, spouses, mistresses, and concubines.

Sarah the gevirah: A comparison of Sarah and the queen mothers, of matriarchs in the dynastic succession of sons and nations

Abraham’s and Sarah’s struggle to produce a child is the first of the ancient Israelites’ struggles to claim the divine promise, individually and collectively. This struggle of the first patriarch and matriarch begins with Sarah’s barrenness and her resolve to find other means to produce an heir for Abraham and herself in Genesis 16. The first nine verses refer to Sarah as Hagar’s “mistress” or gevirah three times (vv 4, 8, 9). Initially, there is little doubt for the reader to be concerned about any question of terminology concerning the term title as Sarah is the mistress of the servant Hagar. The reader, however, encounters a slight problem when one compares the other texts in which the term appears as it is most frequently applied to the queen mother. What becomes evident when one explores these texts and compares their meanings and contexts is that Sarah’s story corresponds to the majority of the contexts of the use of gevirah, where succession of an heir is involved, which is that of the position of the queen mother. In order to demonstrate this similarity, I will first explore Sarah’s story where gevirah appears through the securing of her son and Abraham’s heir, Isaac, all of which centers around the importance of succession. I will follow the story of Sarah the gevirah with how those women given the title of gevirah also acted in matters of succession. I will conclude with the implication of this comparison, which is that gevirah represents a deliberate choice of terminology as this appellation foreshadows Sarah as the chosen matriarch who will carry the promised heir, and justifies the actions she takes in order to secure the succession of her biological son.

Hygienic behaviour selection via freeze-killed honey bee brood not associated with chalkbrood resistance in eastern Australia

Hygienic behaviour is a social immune response in honey bees shown to help provide resistance to honey bee pests and diseases. A survey of hygienic behaviour and brood diseases was conducted on 649 colonies in eastern Australia to initiate a selective breeding program targeting disease resistance and provide a level of resistance to Varroa (Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman and V. jacobsoni Oudemans) mites should they become established in Australia. The test population showed a remarkably high baseline level of hygienic behaviour with 17% of colonies meeting or exceeding breeding selection thresholds. Colonies belonging to a breeding program were 5.8 times more likely to be highly hygienic and colonies headed by queens raised from hygienic queen mothers were 2.2 times more likely. Nectar availability (nectar yielding flowering plants within honey bee forage range) influenced hygienic behaviour expression but was not a significant predictor of level of hygienic behaviour. Surprisingly, hygienic behaviour was not a significant predictor of the presence of infection of the honey bee brood disease chalkbrood (Ascosphaera apis) and was not influential in predicting severity of chalkbrood the infection in surveyed honey bee colonies. This study, along with reports from commercial beekeepers that chalkbrood infection is on the rise, warrants a deeper exploration of the host-pathogen relationship between Apis mellifera and Ascosphaera apis in Australia.

A Queen Mother and the Ottoman Imperial Harem

The chapter details the life and career of a prominent Ottoman-era concubine and queen mother. It thus contributes to a growing body of scholarship on women in elite Ottoman circles. The period known as the sultanate of women, one in which queen mothers (valide sultans) wielded exceptional authority in social and political circles, lasted roughly from the mid-16th to the mid-17th centuries. A closer look at late 17th- and early 18th-century sources, however, suggests this perception of lessening feminine power does not reflect the historical reality. This chapter challenges the perception of a waning of women’s influence during this period by examining the life and career of Rabia Gülnuş Emetullah Valide Sultan (d. 1715).