Nigeria Women's Roles
A family preparing gari, cassava porridge
Courtesy UNICEF (Maggie Black)
As with other aspects of society, women's roles were
primarily governed by regional and ethnic differences. In
the
north, Islamic practices were still common. This process
meant,
generally, less formal education; early teenage marriages,
especially in rural areas; and confinement to the
household,
which was often polygynous, except for visits to kin,
ceremonies,
and the workplace, if employment were available and
permitted by
a girl's family or husband. For the most part, Hausa women
did
not work in the fields, whereas Kanuri women did; both
helped
with harvesting and were responsible for all household
food
processing. Urban women sold cooked foods, usually by
sending
young girls out onto the streets or operating small
stands.
Research indicated that this practice was one of the main
reasons
city women gave for opposing schooling for their
daughters. Even
in elite houses with educated wives, women's presence at
social
gatherings was either nonexistent or very restricted. In
the
modern sector, a few women were appearing at all levels in
offices, banks, social services, nursing, radio,
television, and
the professions (teaching, engineering, environmental
design,
law, pharmacy, medicine, and even agriculture and
veterinary
medicine). This trend resulted from women's secondary
schools,
teachers' colleges, and in the 1980s women holding
approximately
one-fifth of university places--double the proportion of
the
1970s. Research in the 1980s indicated that, for the
Muslim
north, education beyond primary school was restricted to
the
daughters of the business and professional elites, and in
almost
all cases, courses and professions were chosen by the
family, not
the woman themselves.
In the south, women traditionally had economically
important
positions in interregional trade and the markets, worked
on farms
as major labor sources, and had influential positions in
traditional systems of local organization. The south, like
the
north, however, had been polygynous; in 1990 it still was
for
many households, including those professing Christianity.
Women
in the south, especially among the Yoruba peoples, had
received
Western-style education since the nineteenth century, so
they
occupied positions in the professions and to some extent
in
politics. In addition, women headed households, something
not
seriously considered in Nigeria's development plans. Such
households were more numerous in the south, but they were
on the
rise everywhere.
Generally, Nigerian development planning referred to
"adult
males," "households," or "families". Women were included
in such
units but not as a separate category. Up until the 1980s,
the
term "farmer" was assumed to be exclusively male, even
though in
some areas of the south women did most of the farm work.
In
Nigerian terms, a woman was almost always defined as
someone's
daughter, wife, mother, or widow. Single women were
suspect,
although they constituted a large category, especially in
the
cities, because of the high divorce rate. Traditionally,
and to
some extent this remained true in popular culture, single
adult
women were seen as available sexual partners should they
try for
some independence and as easy victims for economic
exploitation.
In Kaduna State, for example, investigations into illegal
land
expropriations noted that women's farms were confiscated
almost
unthinkingly by local chiefs wishing to sell to
urban-based
speculators and would-be commercial farmers.
A national feminist movement was inaugurated in 1982,
and a
national conference held at Ahmadu Bello University. The
papers
presented there indicated a growing awareness by Nigeria's
university-educated women that the place of women in
society
required a concerted effort and a place on the national
agenda;
the public perception, however, remained far behind. For
example,
a feminist meeting in Ibadan came out against polygyny and
then
was soundly criticized by market women, who said they
supported
the practice because it allowed them to pursue their
trading
activities and have the household looked after at the same
time.
Research in the north, however, indicated that many women
opposed
the practice, and tried to keep bearing children to stave
off a
second wife's entry into the household. Although women's
status
would undoubtedly rise, for the foreseeable future
Nigerian women
lacked the opportunities of men.
Data as of June 1991
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