Polygyny
a type of relationship in which the male partner may have multiple female spouses at the same time
Polygyny () is a form of polygamy entailing the marriage of a man to at least two or more women at the same time. The term polygyny is from Ancient Greek πολύ (polú) 'many' and γυνή (gunḗ) 'woman, wife'.
Incidence
Polygyny is more widespread in Africa than in any other continent. Some scholars theorize that the slave trade's impact on the male-to-female sex ratio was a key factor in the emergence and fortification of polygynous practices in regions of Africa.
Polygyny is most common in a region known as the "polygamy belt" in West Africa and Central Africa, with the countries estimated to have the highest polygamy prevalence in the world being Burkina Faso, Mali, Gambia, Niger and Nigeria. In the region of sub-Saharan Africa, polygyny is common and deeply rooted in the culture, with 11 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa living in such marriages (25 percent of the Muslim population and 3 percent of the Christian population, as of 2019). Polygyny is especially widespread in West Africa, with the countries estimated to have the highest polygyny prevalence in the world as of 2019 being Burkina Faso (36%), Mali (34%) and Gambia (30%). Outside of Africa, the highest prevalence is in Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq.
Polygyny was accepted in ancient Hebrew society, in classical China, and in some traditional Native American, African and Polynesian cultures. In the Indian subcontinent, it was known to have been practiced during ancient times.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Polygyny” as a type of relationship in which the male partner may have multiple female spouses at the same time. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as a type of relationship in which the male partner may have multiple female spouses at the same time. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q243688. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005001050. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Polygyny” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.