7 Bessie Head, "Despite broken bondage, Botswana women are still unloved", in A Woman Alone, p.54.

In the old days a woman was regarded as sacred only if she knew her place, which was in her yard with her mother-in-law and children. A number of oppressive traditions, however, completely obliterated her as a thinking, feeling human being and she was exploited in all sort of ways. So heavy is the toll of centuries on the women of Botswana, that even with present-day political independence of the country, one finds that the few highly literate women of the country talk in uncertain terms of their lives and fear to assert themselves. In strongly traditional societies there is a long thread of continuity between the past and the present and one often looks back to the past to explain the social maladies of the present.