Hausa Women Research Articles

BOOK REVIEW:Beverly B. Mack. MUSLIM HAUSA WOMEN SING: HAUSA POPULAR SONG. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2004.

Reviewed by: Muslim Hausa Women Sing: Hausa Popular Song Sani Abba Aliyu Muslim Hausa Women Sing: Hausa Popular Song By Beverly B. MackBloomington: Indiana UP, 2004. 103 pp. ISBN 0-253-21729-6. Muslim Hausa Women Sing: Hausa Popular Song by Beverly Blow Mack is an important addition to the burgeoning body of new scholarly publications on literature and popular culture in Hausa. The coauthor of the exceedingly valuable One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u, Scholar and Scribe (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000), Mack is indeed an authority on Hausa women's literature of Nigeria. The book is divided into two parts: in part 1 (pp. 11–129) we are presented with the main analytical components of the work, while the appendices, in the form of poems translated into the English language, make up part 2 (pp. 133–278). The book's significance lies centrally in its unabashed celebration of the unacknowledged, creative, and highly productive roles of Hausa Muslim women in Northern Nigeria. As Mack indicates, "Muslim Hausa women's poetry and song demonstrate that women's status in Northern Nigeria is neither subservient, static, nor stoic. Women are their own agents, their roles are flexible and negotiable, and they insist on lives that incorporate creative activity into the demands of their private domestic roles. Muslim women not only sing, they dance and create fun in their lives, even in the context of their traditional patriarchal Muslim setting" (3–4). In justifying the selection of six women poets and singers for the study, the author continues the "war" against men by stating that the book "contains the poems that men say do not sing. In truth, many Hausa women performing artists compose for themselves and their audiences of other women" (4). Thus, two of the women are educated composers of poetry (Hauwa Gwaram and Hajia Yar Shehu) treated in profiles 1 and 2; three are performing artists (Maizargadi, Hajia Faji, and Hauwa Mai Duala) handled in profiles 3 and 4; the final profiles (5 and 6) present the most popular of them all, Barmani Maimuna Choge and Binta Katsina. In these profiles, Mack captures the highly variegated and informative professional and social fortunes of women creative artists in the patriarchal, Islamic setting of Hausaland in Northern Nigeria. In contrast to the presumed enshacklement of the Hausa Muslim women, Mack attests that though domestically oriented and minimally educated, "many Hausa women find ways to exercise their creative and entrepreneurial talents in spite of cultural barriers, circumventing the social limitations placed on them. Hausa Muslim women are not restricted by their social roles" (11). The portraits of Hauwa Gwaram and Hajia Yar Shehu exemplify the combined influences of Islamic and Western education in instituting poetic compositional practices in Hausaland. Though important as poets, these women are certainly less well known compared to male composers of far less merit. A significant part of this book is the focus on the dying, little-celebrated but historically important role of the Zabiya tradition as illustrated in the career of the praise singer of the royal court of Kano, Maizargadi. It is clear that the author's access to the palace of Kano, her friendship with one of the emir's wives, and her ability to speak Hausa, as well as her residence in the old city actually enabled her to highlight the classical patron/client phenomenon of Zabiyanci in the palaces of Northern Nigeria. [End Page 196] In profile 4, two singers, the Kukuma-playing Hajia Faji and Maizargadi's friend, Hajiya Mai Duala, the official Zabiya for the Emir of Ningi, Bauchi State, Nigeria, are in focus. Profile 5 dwells extensively on Barmani Maimuna Choge's extemporaneous performances full of "narration and non-verbal notation" (99). The author further aptly states that "Choge's performance is raucous entertainment; she makes use of body movement, gesture, and suggestive metaphor to convey her satiric message. Her bawdy allusions and spirited performance style make her a popular entertainer" (99–100). About an interesting reversal of roles in the male-dominated Hausaland, unlikely to have gone unnoticed by Mack, she reports: "[W]hen I visited [Choge] in Funtuwa, I found her husband at home with the children...

?Metaphor Is a Bridge to Ultimate Reality?: Metaphor in Hausa Women's Poetry

eled on well-known forms of figurative language. Understanding that they are innovative creations couched in familiar form is central to an understanding of Hausa literary aesthetics. Studies of ambiguity in Hausa poetry indicate that this device is necessary to criticism in a hierarchical society. an entertainer must be able to couch criticism in terms with satisfactory surface meaning, where members of the audience who share with the performer an awareness of the subject’s situation and the existing criticism of the subject understand criticism. The ambiguity inherent in metaphor is the keystone of successful Hausa praise singing, and has become an integral part of the written as well as orally composed wa’ko’ki performed by Hausa women in Nigeria.

"Metaphor Is a Bridge to Ultimate Reality": Metaphor in Hausa Women's Poetry

"Metaphor Is a Bridge to Ultimate Reality": Metaphor in Hausa Women's Poetry

Utilization of maternal health services by rural Hausa women in Zaria environs, northern Nigeria: has primary health care made a difference?

Background: Expanding coverage, strengthening of, and increasing access and utilization of maternal health services is one of the key components of Nigeria's Primary Health Care (PHC) efforts , which was started in 1986. A descriptive study was undertaken to document the level and pattern of utilization of selected maternal health services among rural Hausa women in order to assess progress in PHC implementation. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive, quantitative study using structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data on family planning, antenatal, post natal and delivery services utilization pattern from a total population of 655 currently married women in the reproductive age group in two predominantly Hausa villages in north-western Nigeria. The findings were compared with the baseline data obtained in the local government area at the start of PHC in 1986. Results: About two-thirds of the women had heard of family planning. There were statistically significant associations between age (P Conclusion: Utilization of orthodox maternal health services among the rural Hausa women is abysmally low and PHC implementation has not made any appreciable impact on their maternal health services uptake. KEY WORDS: Primary health care; Progress assessment; Maternal health services; Utilization; Rural Hausa women; Nigeria Journal of Community Medicine & Primary Health Care Vol.16(2) 2004: 47-54

Hausa Women Writers Confronting the Traditional Status of Women in Modern Islamic Society: Feminist Thought in Nigerian Popular Fiction

This essay explores a burgeoning corpus of contemporary Hausa literature from northern Nigeria. These popular romance novels are an exploratory forum for the socially and culturally loaded issues of polygamy, marriages of coercion, purdah (the Islamic tradition of seclusion), and education for females. While the writers themselves insist that their ultimate intention is to exemplify proper moral behavior, other socially reformative didactic intentions are unmistakable in these books. The article focuses on a conservative writer, Bilkisu Ahmed Funtuwa, and a progressive writer, Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, and shows that both are feminist in valuing education, justice under Islamic law for women, and reform in the name of Islamic law. Whether traditionalist or modernizing, this romance literature is the target of widespread hostile conservative criticism even while steadily producing national bestsellers; these works have assumed the thankless task of suturing diverse social attitudes.

Children at work in rural northern Nigeria: patterns of age, space and gender

Children are increasingly recognised by geographers and other social scientists as independent actors who make valuable (albeit often overlooked) economic contributions to households and society. Hausa children in rural Northern Nigeria are highly mobile and play important economic roles supporting married women who spend much time in their walled residences ( gida) because of the local socio-religious practice of Muslim seclusion. Secluded Hausa women have low mobility and do not attend local periodic markets, but make essential day-to-day purchases from child house-to-house hawkers while sending children on errands to make purchases on their behalf. This study shows how children work both independently and alongside adults in the spheres of agricultural production (on farms), domestic reproduction (in homesteads) and trade (within markets). The research reported documents the variety of children's work activities, predominantly through time use measurement, in order to examine aspects of the socio-spatial construction of childhood in a rural Northern Nigerian community. This is innovative on two counts. First, most earlier discussions of divisions of labour in Muslim Hausaland neglect both the work of children, and reproductive work. Second, even work that considers reproduction, or children's work, does not provide detailed time measurements of reproductive burdens. The paper examines divisions of children's labour and analyses how gender, space, age and other factors shape young people's experiences of rural life. The evidence presented here of children as competent agents making significant economic contributions in rural society challenges prevailing conceptions of children as mere dependent burdens on adult society.

A “Cinderella” Tale in the Hausa Muslim Women's Imagination

AN IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTE of Hausa oral literature, as of Afro-Islamic and other African oral literatures in general, is improvisation. tale exists only when it is narrated/performed, and with virtually every new narration it assumes a new life in response to the artist's interpretation of the new situation -time, location, setting, mood, and material conditions-within which it is contextualized. This essay looks at how Islam has impacted a recent narration of The Story of the Orphan who Marries the Prince of Masar-a wicked stepmother tale akin to the one popularly known as Cinderella in the West. This takes place at a time of increasing Islamic resurgence and a growing participation of women in redefining Islam in the Hausa culture of West Africa. Elsewhere I have argued that in general Hausa women's voices have been marginalized as a result of both the local culture and colonial patriarchy. Of course, a tiny minority of women of upper and middle class households did manage to contribute to the public sphere, especially in the field of Islamic knowledge and literary production (Alidou, forthcoming). cultural and political activism and literary works of the daughters of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, the Islamic founder and leader of Sokoto Caliphate, for example, of which Nana Asma'u's legacy remains one of the most remarkable, are already well documented (see Boyd; Boyd and Mack; and Mack and Boyd). In general, however, traditional (Islamic) colonial and postcolonial educational structures combined to disempower women. In this process, Islamic knowledge-still primarily under the control of men-was continuously deployed to construct an ideology that justified the silencing of women, especially in the public sphere. However, the wind of democratization that swept the continent in the 1990s, calling for pluralistic rights of social constituents-for example, Christians and ethnic minorities-in the Niger republic, created room for women to seek Islamic knowledge on their own terms (even if still within patriarchal space) as a means of reaching a new understanding of women's rights within Islam and Islamic societies. Ever since, women have seized the political space of liberalization to assert their own knowledge of Islam, to contribute to the socio-cultural and political reshaping of the nation, and to engage in the discourse of defining a Nigerien Muslim identity by providing a woman's perspective (Alidou, Women and the

Wife Seclusion and the Spatial Praxis of Gender Ideology in Nigerian Hausaland

In much of Nigerian Hausaland the prevailing religio-cultural ideology of female seclusion (if not always the practice) impinges on married Muslim Hausa women to a greater, or lesser, degree. This article examines the intimate relationships between space, gender and ideology in contemporary rural Hausa society, showing the social construction (and connectedness) of gender identities and associated spatial identities, thus illustrating how spatial praxis is based on hegemonic patriarchal gender ideology. Observations and interview material gathered from a village case study in Kano State demonstrate how gender divisions correspond with the ideology and contemporary practice of wife seclusion. Intersecting patterns of gender, space and time are revealed by detailed analyses of time- and space-use data, which scrutinise men's and women's daily activities and mobility patterns. The cross-cutting of gender with class, age and marital status is shown to be highly significant in determining everyday experiences of spatial praxis, especially for women. A materialist feminist theoretical framework is used to explain this gendered geography of Nigerian Hausaland in which men's and women's worlds are spatially segregated, yet complexly interlocked and interdependent beyond simple public‐private divisions of ‘female’ household compounds (private space) and ‘male’ public space. For this peasant society, aspects of the rural economy and ideology emerge as powerful factors in determining the nature of seclusion as part of gender praxis. It is argued that due to various cultural and religious factors socio-economic development in Northern Nigeria has not been translated into improved autonomy for Hausa women.

The fatty acid composition of human milk in northern Nigeria.

The authors previously reported that the milk of Yoruba women in southwestern Nigeria was deficient in alpha-linolenic acid and contained a high percentage (42%) of medium chain-length fatty acids (MCFA, C10-C14). In the present study, the authors used capillary gas-liquid chromatography to analyze the milk of Hausa women in the northern region of Nigeria. The milk of the Hausa women contained 27% MCFA, 10.6% linoleic acid, 0.41% alpha-linolenic acid, 0.52% arachidonic acid, and 0.32% docosahexaenoic acid. The proportion of alpha-linolenic acid in the serum phospholipids of a subset of exclusively breastfed infants (n = 15; mean age, 6.2 +/- 0.3 months) was below the limit of detection (< 0.03%). While the milk of women in northern Nigeria is adequate with regard to n-3 and n-6 fatty acids, to satisfy the requirements for alpha-linolenic acid, it may be necessary to supplement the infants of these women after the first 6 months of life.

Dead Mothers and Injured Wives: The Social Context of Maternal Morbidity and Mortality among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria

Northern Nigeria has a maternal mortality ratio greater than 1,000 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Serious maternal morbidity (for example, vesico-vaginal fistula) is also common. Among the most important factors contributing to this tragic situation are: an Islamic culture that undervalues women; a perceived social need for women's reproductive capacities to be under strict male control; the practice of purdah (wife seclusion), which restricts women's access to medical care; almost universal female illiteracy; marriage at an early age and pregnancy often occurring before maternal pelvic growth is complete; a high rate of obstructed labor; directly harmful traditional medical beliefs and practices; inadequate facilities to deal with obstetric emergencies; a deteriorating economy; and a political culture marked by rampant corruption and inefficiency. The convergence of all of these factors has resulted in one of the worst records of female reproductive health existing anywhere in the world.

De-Confounding Gender: Feminist Theorizing and Western Culture, a Comment on Hawkesworth's "Confounding Gender"

Previous articleNext article No AccessReader CommentDe-Confounding Gender: Feminist Theorizing and Western Culture, a Comment on Hawkesworth's "Confounding Gender"Oyeronke OyewumiOyeronke Oyewumi Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 23, Number 4Summer, 1998 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/495301 Views: 81Total views on this site Citations: 32Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1998 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Abolition, Gender Radicality, (Jan 2022): 1–33.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-001 Black, Trans, Feminism, (Jan 2022): 35–65.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-003 Fugitivity, Un/gendered, (Jan 2022): 66–87.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-004 Trans/figurative, Blackness, (Jan 2022): 88–112.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-005 Feminist, Fugitivity, (Jan 2022): 113–144.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-007 Questioned, Gendered, (Jan 2022): 145–174.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-008 Trigger, Rebel, (Jan 2022): 175–198.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-009 Hope, Fugitive, (Jan 2022): 199–228.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-010 Notes, (Jan 2022): 229–262.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-011 Bibliography, (Jan 2022): 263–281.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022428-012Shelley Lynn Tremain Philosophy of Disability, Conceptual Engineering, and the Nursing Home-Industrial-Complex in Canada, International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies 4, no.11 (Jun 2021).https://doi.org/10.13169/intecritdivestud.4.1.0010Claire Somerville, Khatia Munguambe The rise of non-communicable disease (NCDs) in Mozambique: decolonising gender and global health, Gender & Development 29, no.11 (Mar 2021): 189–206.https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2021.1885220Oluwasola Daniels Gender relations and social grading system in pre-colonial Akoko: Isua Akoko example, African Identities 7 (Oct 2020): 1–13.https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2020.1816897Katherine Bischoping, Zhipeng Gao Reframing generations scholarship through the eyes of ordinary Chinese, Chinese Sociological Dialogue 3, no.22 (May 2018): 133–147.https://doi.org/10.1177/2397200918772509Sylvia Bawa “Feminists make too much noise!”: generational differences and ambivalence in feminist development politics in Ghana, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines 52, no.11 (May 2018): 1–17.https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2018.1462720Olayinka Oyeleye Feminism(s) and Oppression: Rethinking Gender from a Yoruba Perspective, (Nov 2017): 349–369.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59291-0_23Sumit Kane, Matilda Rial, Anthony Matere, Marjolein Dieleman, Jacqueline E.W. Broerse, Maryse Kok Gender relations and women's reproductive health in South Sudan, Global Health Action 9, no.11 (Jan 2017): 33047.https://doi.org/10.3402/gha.v9.33047Nonofo Losike-Sedimo Theoretical Discussion of Gender and Power, (Jan 2015): 146–166.https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8321-1.ch008Adryan Wallace Agency through Development: Hausa Women's NGOs and CBOs in Kano, Nigeria, Feminist Economics 20, no.44 (Nov 2014): 281–305.https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2014.963636Joshua Simpkins Seeing White Men: Bias in Gender Categorization, Gender Issues 31, no.11 (Jan 2014): 21–33.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-014-9116-zJohanna Bergman Lodin Intrahousehold Bargaining and Distributional Outcomes Regarding NERICA Upland Rice Proceeds in Hoima District, Uganda, Gender, Technology and Development 16, no.33 (Nov 2012): 253–278.https://doi.org/10.1177/0971852412459425Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyĕwùmí Decolonizing the Intellectual and the Quotidian: Yorùbá Scholars(hip) and Male Dominance, (Jan 2011): 9–33.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230116276_2Epifania Amoo-Adare Engendering Critical Spatial Literacy: Migrant Asante Women and the Politics of Urban Space, (Jan 2011): 101–118.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230116276_6Bagele Chilisa, Gabo Ntseane Resisting dominant discourses: implications of indigenous, African feminist theory and methods for gender and education research, Gender and Education 22, no.66 (Nov 2010): 617–632.https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2010.519578Rose Marie Beck Gender, innovation and ambiguity: speech prohibitions as a resource for ‘space to move’, Discourse & Society 20, no.55 (Sep 2009): 531–553.https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926509106409Keith Brown, Doris Hamner, Susan Foley, Jonathan Woodring Doing Disability: Disability Formations in the Search for Work*, Sociological Inquiry 79, no.11 (Feb 2009): 3–24.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2008.00269.xDiana Khor, Saori Kamano Introduction, Journal of Lesbian Studies 10, no.3-43-4 (Sep 2008): 1–9.https://doi.org/10.1300/J155v10n03_01Sara Goodkind Gender-Specific Services in the Juvenile Justice System: A Critical Examination, Affilia 20, no.11 (Sep 2016): 52–70.https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109904272061 Myra J. Hird Considerations for a Psychoanalytic Theory of Gender Identity and Sexual Desire: The Case of Intersex Hird, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no.44 (Jul 2015): 1067–1092.https://doi.org/10.1086/343131Anne Fausto-Sterling Dualismos em duelo, Cadernos Pagu 256, no.17-1817-18 (Jan 2002): 9–79.https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-83332002000100002Wendy McKenna, Suzanne J. Kessler Retrospective Response, Feminism & Psychology 10, no.11 (Jul 2016): 66–72.https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353500010001010Nonofo Losike-Sedimo Theoretical Discussion of Gender and Power, (): 69–84.https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1913-3.ch004

The meaning of contraceptive choice and constraint for Hausa women in a northern Nigerian town

Hausa women residing in the northern Nigerian town of Zaria have a range of traditional and modem contraceptive methods, as well as alternatives such as abortion, available to them for controlling fertility. Whether they actually avail themselves of these options, however, relates to the contemporaneous social, economic, political and religious context in which the meanings of contraceptive choice and constraint are constructed. For example, young, unmarried Hausa Muslim women attending secondary school are constrained by social conventions that both ostracise those with premarital pregnancies and discourage discussion of sexuality and consequently contraceptive use. Married Hausa women in Zaria who attend adult Islamic education classes may be encouraged to practice withdrawal but not to use modem contraceptive methods such as pills or condoms. While the former is considered acceptable because of its specific mention in Islamic texts, other forms of contraceptives are viewed with suspicion both for health reasons and as symbols of Western hegemony. While some Muslim Hausa women with both Western and Islamic education are beginning to put forth their own ideas about proper Islamic practice of contraception, a prevailing gender ideology supports the view that decisions regarding these matters are appropriately made by men. This paper focuses on the interpretations of contraceptives made by Muslim Hausa women in Zaria, Nigeria, and on the underlying factors that support their perceptions.

Implications of Nutritional Beliefs and Taboos ‐ Hausa and Yoruba Pregnant Women in Lagos Nigeria

One hundred and forty eight middle class urban pregnant Hausa and Yoruba women in the second trimester were randomly sampled and examined for beliefs and taboos. Haemoglobin level of the Yoruba women was significantly higher than their Hausa counterparts 12.9gm%.The mean haemoglobin at booking for the Yoruba was 11.5gm%, while the mean haemoglobin for the Hausa was recorded as 10.5gm%. Mean packed cell volume for both at booking and post for Yoruba was 34.2 and 35.4 while the Hausa was 31.5 and 34.2 respectively Nutrition Anaemia was higher among the Hausa women than the Yoruba 56.7% to 72.9%. Anthropometric measurement of the babies showed the following mean birth weight of their 298 babies in this study was 2.89kg. The incidence of low birth weight in this study for Yoruba was 14.8% while the value for the Hausa was 22.9%. Head circumference and chest circumference median recorded for Yoruba babies were 38.5cm and 32.5cm and the Hausa babies were 32.5cm and 26.5cm respectively. About 75% of the Hausas identified their mothers as instrumental to these taboos and beliefs while the Yorubas identified their mother‐in‐laws as the source of reinforcement of the taboos and beliefs.

Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century.

Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century.

Fracture through a congenital carpal coalition

Carpal coalition, sometimes referred to as carpal fusion, is a rare entity that occurs as an isolated defect or in conjunction with other congenital abnormalities. Multiple carpal coalitions and coalitions to the radius or ulna are rare without other anomalies. The most common coalition is the lunotriquetral, followed in incidence by capitohamate coalitions, with the others being much more uncommon. The incidence of the most common coalition is about 0.1% in white Americans, but is as high as 9.5% in Nigerian Hausa women.‘.’ Carpal coalitions are usually asymptomatic. There are no functional motion deficits with a coalition. Range of motion, as measured by Dean and Jones,3 showed an increase in radial deviation in children with carpal coalitions. Recently, there have been reports of symptomatic pisiform-hamate coalitions, as well as symptomatic, incomplete coalitions. Fractures of carpal coalitions are exceedingly rare, having only been reported in patients with lunotriquetral coalitions.2.4.5 Gross et a1.,6 in 1989, refuted the existence of fractures in Cockshott’s’ atraumatic patients in his 1963 study, suggesting that they were actually incomplete coalitions. There are no reports of fractures through other types of carpal coalitions. This study reports a case of a fracture through a trapezoid-capitate congenital coalition, and the successful treatment with a thumb spica cast.

Muslim Women Traders of Northern Nigeria: Perspectives from the City of Yola

Since Polly Hill's pioneering work (1969) on the economics of households in a northern Nigerian town, devoted largely to the analysis of what she termed the among Hausa women, there has been a proliferation of related studies (e.g., Barkow 1972; Simmons 1975; Hill 1977; Longhurst 1982; Schildkrout 1983; Callaway 1987).(1) These and many other works show that a vast majority of married Hausa women from such cities as Kano, Katsina, and Zaria, and their rural environs, often earn a sizeable income from petty or large-scale trade, while participating in the Islamic institution of purdah, in which they must remain secluded in the house. As a result of this work, the hidden trade has been viewed as a Hausa, a Nigerian, or perhaps a West African women's institution (Schildkrout 1983:125) that serves the dual function of enhancing both their prestige and modesty and of providing them with some remuneration for their household labor. Inasmuch as the studies demonstrate the prevalence of the hidden trade among Hausa women, several questions about it warrant further attention. First, although there is general agreement among observers that the practice provides Muslim women with a measure of autonomy within the household, there is less said about whether it mainly serves ends, augmenting the Islamic obligatory contribution of husbands, or has sociocultural purposes, being reinvested primarily in the Islamic system of marriage. Second, while the prevalence and nature of the trade in Hausaland has become quite clear, comparatively little attention has been accorded to the region's groups or individuals who do not trade, in terms of the variables that may affect the broad patterns and individual choices. Finally, very little compatible information is available for non-Hausa women in northern Nigeria, who constitute a sizeable percentage of the region's women,(2) even in the cities that were studied. Indeed, there appears to be a general assumption in the literature that all Muslim northern Nigerian women, given the right incentives (e.g., economic) and conditions, would choose to become active traders. In short, further research and analysis is necessary on the hidden trade, beyond the available case studies of Hausa women, that would broaden the perspectives on the practice, or more comprehensively cover ethnically heterogeneous communities dominated either by Hausa or other Muslim ethnic groups. Moreover, in view of Nigeria's current crisis and the government's designation of women-in-development activities as one way of alleviating its peoples' hardships, it is timely to determine exactly how widespread the institution actually is, and whether this is an economic venture which can be enhanced by future development activities. With these questions in mind, the following is a comparative study of Muslim women's trade in northern Nigeria, based on a review of the available relevant literature and on my own research(3) in an ethnically heterogeneous northern Nigerian city, Yola, in which Hausa are numerically and economically significant, yet are outnumbered by the Fulbe and members of other ethnic groups. The analysis will first comparatively summarize the data on Hausaland, discussing the factors that condition the women's roles and their decision to trade and the variations that obtain within Hausaland. The intensive, comparative study of Yola women will show that due to relatively uniform regional historical trends, political and factors, and cultural tendencies, the hidden trade is indeed prevalent outside Hausaland. The Muslim women of Yola, having shared in the common northern Nigerian experience, now participate in and rely on the practice, although the custom has been adapted to conform to local conditions and traditions and therefore varies in many respects from that of Hausaland. We shall also attempt to explain why the dominant ethnic group of Yola, the Fulbe, have thus far been resisting full incorporation into this tradition, largely on what they term as cultural grounds, and we will assess the impact of these attitudes on Yola's informal trade and food industries and on its non-Fulbe societies in general. …

Listening to Women's Voices: The Retrieval and Construction of African Women's History

Listening to Women's Voices: The Retrieval and Construction of African Women's History Luise White. The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. xiv + 285 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-226-90506-8 (cl); 0-226-89507-6 (pb); $34.95 (cl); $14.95 (pb). Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack, eds. Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. xii + 297 pp.; ill.; map; glossary. ISBN 0-299-13020-7 (cl); 0-299-13024-X (pb); $49.50 (cl); $19.95 (pb). Belinda Bozzoli, with the assistance of Mmantho Nkotsoe. Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann Educational Books; London: James Currey, 1991. xii + 292 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-435-08054-7 (Heinemann, cl); 0-435-08056-3 (Heinemann, pb); $45.00 (Heinemann, cl); $19.95 (Heinemann, pb). Jane L. Parpart The three books under review reflect many of the current trends in the study of African women's history. AU three are concerned with retrieving the voices and experiences of a largely silenced group—African women—and aU three, espedaUy White and BozzoU, use a number of new approaches to achieve this goal. Research and writing on African women have evolved rapidly over the last twenty years. Largely the preserve of anthropologists and missionaries irdtiaUy, African women's history came into its own in 1976 with the pubUcation of a landmark coUection, Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, edited by Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay.1 This coUection sought to correct the prevalent assumptions of western scholars and colonial commentators who had represented African women as traditionalists, tied to the private sphere, with Uttle interest in economic or poUtical matters. Women in Africa exploded these myths, revealing them for what they were—western gender stereotypes that reduced African women to wives and mothers, completely ignoring their crucial role in economic and poUtical activities. In the book women emerge as entrepreneurs and producers , reUgious leaders and community activists. While the influence of © 1992 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 4 No. 2 (Fall) 172 Journal of Women's History Fall patriarchy, or male domination, is acknowledged, women's capadty to influence events and to protect their interests outside the home could no longer be ignored. Most early scholarship on African women emphasized women's economic and poUtical activities. Drawing on the liberal tradition of feminist studies emerging in the West, and the growing concern with women's development, these early studies focused on issues of equity, particularly women's access to education, employment, and political power. A reformist approach, with its beUef in rational poUcy reform, underlay much of this work. The articles in Edna Bay's Women and Work in Africa, for example, chronicled the double day of most African women, with their heavy productive and reproductive duties, and caUed for African women to take part in the process of modernization.2 A more dired preoccupation with African women's relation to the state, legal structures, and poUtics inspired some important writings as weU. Jean Hay's and Marda Wright's collection , African Women and the Law, explored the way African women coped with poUtical and legal structures, both in precolonial African sodeties and during the maelstrom of colonial change.3 Influenced by the dependency school and Marxist- and socialist-feminist scholarship, some scholars sought answers to African women's subordination in patriarchal and class structures.4 Claire Robertson's and Iris Berger's landmark study, Women and Class in Africa, extended the analysis of women's economic activities to recognize the importance of class on African women's Uves and opportunities, both in colonial and postcolonial societies. A Marxist political-economy approach to feminist analysis, with its emphasis on class and patriarchy, inspired Sharon Stichter's and my edited coUection, Patriarchy and Class: African Women in the Home and the Workforce. A focus on poUtical economy and the gendered nature of the state also informed the articles in Women and the State in Africa, which, whUe recognizing male domination of state structures, adopts a rather diffuse definition of politics and power in order to understand...

Hausa women in the twentieth century

Hausa women in the twentieth century

Hausa families and health care choices: Birth injuries in African communities.

In the Islamic faith childbearing is believed to be a religious duty. All Muslims in Nigerian society are therefore expected to marry and bear children; there is simply no place for unmarried women of childbearing age. Birth control is rarely used so pregnancy occurs early and frequently in a young brides life. Often however an history of repeated infections and poor childhood nutrition as well as physical immaturity leave these young women with bodies which are unprepared for delivery. Cephalopelvic disproportion a precondition for obstructed labor is common. Vesicovaginal fistula a tear between the bladder and vagina is a common result of prolonged obstructed labor experienced by many young women in northern Nigeria. The status of Hausa women is lower than that of women in other parts of Nigeria. Their circumstances reflect the overlap between the Islamic religion and the indigenous Hausa culture. It has been said that early marriage is expected high fertility is respected submission to male dominance is demanded and polygamy and female seclusion are the norm. The authors interviewed members of more than 400 households in Kaduna State Nigeria about household decision-making and health care choices particularly those related to childbirth. Survey results showed that while male heads of households still make most health care decisions male and female respondents were both in favor of using modern medical care. Health care education especially about the dangers of high-risk delivery at home should therefore be made the centerpiece of maternal health services.

Muslim Hausa Women in Nigeria: Tradition and Change. By Barbara J. Callaway (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987. xx, 242p. $29.95).

Muslim Hausa Women in Nigeria: Tradition and Change. By Barbara J. Callaway (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987. xx, 242p. $29.95).