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Strengthening Economic Rights and Women's Occupational Choice : The Impact of Reforming Ethiopia's Family LawThis paper evaluates the impact of
 strengthening legal rights on the types of economic
 opportunities that are pursued. Ethiopia changed its family
 law, requiring both spouses' consent in the
 administration of marital property, removing the ability of
 a spouse to deny permission for the other to work outside
 the home, and raising women's minimum age of marriage.
 Thus both access to resources and the removal of
 restrictions on employment served to strengthen women's
 bargaining position within the household and their ability
 to pursue economic opportunities. Although this reform now
 applies nationally, it was initially rolled out in the two
 chartered cities and three of Ethiopia's nine regions.
 Using nationally representative household surveys from just
 prior to the reform and five years later allows for a
 difference-in-difference estimation of the reform's
 impact. The analysis finds that women were relatively more
 likely to work in occupations that require work outside the
 home, employ more educated workers, and in paid and
 full-time jobs where the reform had been enacted,
 controlling for time and location effects. As the relative
 increase in women's participation in these activities
 was 15-24 percent higher in areas where the reform was
 carried out, the magnitude of the impact is significant too.
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Getting married twice: the relationship between indigenous and Christian marriages among the Ndau of the Chimanimani area of ZimbabweThe thesis focuses on the Ndau people of Chimanimani, Zimbabwe. Contact with Westerners brought significant changes to their marriage practices. South Africa General Mission (SAGM) missionaries required Ndau people to conduct church (“white”) weddings for their marriages to be recognised by the church. This has caused a problem whereby Ndau Christians marry traditionally/customarily and yet still have to conduct church weddings. The church has not rethought its position on the necessity for having this duplication of marriages. The thesis sought to develop an in-depth understanding of Ndau people’s perceptions and experiences on the connection between and the necessity for both marriages in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe. Data regarding Ndau people’s understanding of marriage practices was collected using in-depth semi-structured and focus group interviews.
 Following a qualitative research design, the study used the phenomenological approach to collect data and postcolonialism as the research paradigm. Using these, twenty individual and five focus group interviews were conducted. Seven themes emerged from the data. These covered marriage practices of the Ndau, the most preferred way of marriage, various reasons for having church weddings, perceived relationship between the two marriages, different views on the sufficiency of traditional marriages, thoughts on the expenses of church weddings, and how participants married and reasons thereof.
 The findings showed that Ndau Christians conduct church weddings for several reasons. These are because they:
 want to celebrate their marriages
 desire God’s blessings when they convert to Christianity. It is regarded as God’s biblical requirement
 understand it as a church requirement/rule
 get church teaching that encourage church weddings
 need recognition and acceptance in the church as well as general social recognition
 associate Christianity with Westernisation
 vi
 regard it as a deterrent to unfaithfulness and polygyny
 regard church weddings as having wider official recognition than traditional marriages and
 want associated material advantages.
 The conclusion states that there is neither a theological nor a biblical basis for requiring Ndau Christians to have church weddings. Using a postcolonial hybrid approach, the thesis suggests a merging of the two marriages into one ceremony. More recommendations were given and the church was challenged to be more responsive to its people’s struggles.
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An analysis of marriage relationships among Tswana speaking Catholics in the Odi district : a theological ethical studyThis dissertation deals with an ethical analysis of marriage
 relationships among Tswana speaking Catholics in the light of the
 understandings of marriage of both the African and Christian traditions.
 These traditions have certain practices and perspectives that, if they are put
 together, can enrich marriage in all its aspects.
 The first two chapters analyse the practices and perspectives of
 marriage within the African and Christian traditions, while the third
 compares and contrasts them. The aspects dealt with are a) compatible
 values from African and Christian marriage and b) incompatible values
 from African and Christian marriages.
 In chapter four, the role of the Church in restoring the purpose and
 the meaning of marriage and what it can do to improve Catholic marriage
 relationships among Tswana speaking people are discussed and some
 practical suggestions are proposed.