Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century

✍ Scribed by Catherine M. Coles; Beverly Mack; Neil Skinner

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 310
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, with populations in Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana. Their long history of city-states and Islamic caliphates, their complex trading economies, and their cultural traditions have attracted the attention of historians, political economists, linguists, and anthropologists. The large body of scholarship on Hausa society, however, has assumed the subordination of women to men.
"Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century "refutes the notion that Hausa women are pawns in a patriarchal Muslim society. The contributors, all of whom have done field research in Hausaland, explore the ways Hausa women have balanced the demands of Islamic expectations and Western choices as their society moved from a precolonial system through British colonial administration to inclusion in the modern Nigerian nation. This volume examines the roles of a wide variety of women, from wives and workers to political activists and mythical figures, and it emphasizes that women have been educators and spiritual leaders in Hausa society since precolonial times. From royalty to slaves and concubines, in traditional Hausa cities and in newer towns, from the urban poor to the newly educated elite, the "invisible women" whose lives are documented here demonstrate that standard accounts of Hausa society must be revised.
Scholars of Hausa and neighboring West African societies will find in this collection a wealth of new material and a model of how research on women can be integrated with general accounts of Hausa social, religious, political, and economic life. For students and scholars looking at gender and women's roles cross-culturally, this volume provides an invaluable African perspective.

✦ Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Forword (Neil Skinner, page vii)
Acknowledgments (page ix)
Note on Foreign Terms (page xi)
1. Women in Twentieth-Century Hausa Society (Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack, page 3)
Part 1. Hausa Women in Islam
2. Islamic Leadership Positions for Women in Contemporary Kano Society (Barbara B.M. Sule and Priscilla E. Starratt, page 29)
3. From Accra to Kano: One Woman's Experience (Deborah Pellow, page 50)
4. Islamic Values, the State, and "the Development of Women": The Case of Niger (Roberta Ann Dunbar, page 69)
5. Hausa-Fulani Women: The State of the Struggle (Bilkisu Yusuf, page 90)
Part 2. The Power of Women
6. Royal Wives in Kano (Beverly Mack, page 109)
7. Women and the Law in Early-Twentieth-Century Kano (Allan Christelow, page 130)
8. The Role of Women in Kano City Politics (Barbara J. Callaway, page 145)
Part 3. Women in the Changing Economy
9. Hausa Women's Work in a Declining Urban Economy: Kaduna, Nigeria, 1980-1985 (Catherine Coles, page 163)
10. Hausa Women in the Urban Economy of Kano (Alan Frishman, page 192)
Part 4. Women's Voices: Feminine Gender in Ritual, the Arts, and Media
11. Gender Relationships and Religion: Women in the Hausa Bori of Ader, Niger (Nicole Echard, page 207)
12. Marriage in the Hausa Tatsuniya Tradition: A Cultural and Cosmic Balance (Connie Stephens, page 221)
13. Women's Roles in the Contemporary Hausa Theater of Niger (Janet Beik, page 232)
14. Ideology, the Mass Media, and Women: A Study from Radio Kaduna, Nigeria (Ayesha M. Imam, page 244)
Glossary of Hausa and Other Foreign Terms (page 255)
Bibliography (page 261)
Contributors (page 289)
Index (page 291)