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Women In Africa

Women in Africa


Timothy Veneylo November 26, 1995 History 387

In many parts of Africa, there is a large discrepancy in who controlled
the resources, access to the economy, individual autonomy and central voice in
the government between the men and the women. African men, for the most part,
have the largest say in the activities of the country. When issues of concern
arise, "men's issues" usually became the issues of national concern, and those
issues pertinent to women go to the back of everyone's mind. Women are forced
to accept the results of men's actions, and usually nothing gets accomplished
that benefits them. Because women continually were overlooked, they began to
come together and protest. If one examines the following women's protests and
their outcomes: A.E. Afigbo's The Warrant Chiefs, Sylvia Leith-Ross' African
Women, Jean Allman's "Rounding Up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in
Colonial Asante", and Irene Staunton's Mothers of the Revolution, several
questions arise. What were women seeking and how did this differ from what men
wanted? Did women attain their goals, and if not, why not? If women were not
successful in getting their concerns at the forefront of national interest, at
what, if anything, were they successful?
In several instances women became so angered by their lack of voice,
that they were moved to act. In some of these cases, women were relatively
successful in organizing and mobilizing. The story of the Aba Riots, which is
discussed in both The Warrant Chiefs and African Women, proves this point well.
In Nigeria, in the late 1920's, the Warrant Chiefs wanted to impose a system of
annual taxation. What was so displeasing to the people about the tax was that
it involved a census, and that the money went towards no specific project. The
concept of counting free people was a foreign one to the Igbo. This notion went
contrary to custom, and it was believed to bring about death (Afigbo, 229). The
people of...