Gender Diversity in Africa

Among the Igbo, a woman of standing could marry another woman, becoming the social 'husband' and head of a household — a role about kinship and lineage, not necessarily romance.

An all-female military corps of the Kingdom of Dahomey who occupied a recognized status outside conventional womanhood and were addressed with masculine honorifics.

Assigned-male individuals among the Lango who lived as women, married men, and were treated as women socially and ritually.

Assigned-male spiritual figures who lived as women and held priestly roles long before European contact, documented by 17th-century Portuguese chroniclers.

Assigned-male individuals raised as girls and integrated into women's social worlds — a role observed by 19th-century travelers.

Women without male heirs could 'marry' wives whose children continued the woman's lineage — a legal and social maleness.