Female Status and Role Transition in the Tswana Life Cycle

In a review of anthropological data on the climacteric, Griffen (1978) notes that there is a death of material pertaining to post-menopausal women in the ethnographic record. She correctly attributes this partially to "the anti-woman, anti-aging biases within U.S. culture, the culture in which so many ethnographers have been trained" (Griffin 1978:51). In line with current efforts to amend this situation (see e.g., Beyen 1986, Davis 1986, Lock 1986), this paper examines adult female status and role transition in terms of life-cycle progression among the Kgatla of Botswana.