Crafting Future Memories

Abstract

Myths of gendered labour and specifically the masculinisation of certain forms of artisanship are bothsteeped in Victorian colonial ideals of female respectability that serve to exclude unemployed, educatedwomen from market relevant, lucrative jobs in carpentry trades, in the city of Lagos, West Africa. Thesehist orically situated dynamics of social exclusion expose an increasing number of educated women topoverty in one of Africa's primary economic hubs. Utilising the linguistic devices of rich descriptionsand first person accounts in this reflective paper, and drawing data from culturally groundedethnographic research on a female carpentry training project in the city, I examine how the communitieswhich emerged from the project negotiate socio economic, familial, and historical constraints in aneffort to buil d new, inclusive training pathways and craft alternative future narratives of gendered labourpractices in Lagos.Keywords