ABSTRACT
In Kinshasa all women who earn their living by liaisons with men are known as femmes libres—'free women'. In Kinshasa as in many societies prostitutes are neither slaves nor coerced, either by organisations or individual pimps. Kinshasa had suffered major political and social changes. As a corollary to the view of prostitution as an urban phenomenon, there is a tendency for men in Kinshasa to regard women who were brought up in town or who have lived therefor any length of time as 'spoilt', flighty and immoral and devoid of the proper respect that a woman should show towards a husband. The traditional stereotype of the proper occupation for a woman varies little from society to society, in this part of Africa. Petty trading is the occupation of many women, not only the unmarried, for married women supplement their husbands' income in this way.
