Ifi Amadiume - Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ifi Amadiume is an award-winning Nigerian poet, anthropologist and essayist. She is associate professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.

MALE

DAUGHTERS,

FEMALE

HUSBANDS

GENDER AND SEX

IN AN AFRICAN

SOCIETY

IFI AMADIUME

WITH A FOREWORD BY

PAT CAPLAN

Zed Books

London

Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society was first published in 1987 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK

This edition was first published in 2015

www.zedbooks.co.uk

Copyright Ifi Amadiume, 1987, 2015

Foreword Pat Caplan, 2015

The right of Ifi Amadiume to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Original edition typeset by by EMS Photosetters, Rochford, Essex

Cover designed by www.alice-marwick.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78360-332-9 pb

ISBN 978-1-78360-333-6 pdf

ISBN 978-1-78360-334-3 epub

ISBN 978-1-78360-335-0 mobi

Ifi Amadiumes study of gender and sex in her hometown of Nnobi broke new ground when it was first published in 1987. Up to that point, there were virtually no studies of African women by an African woman. This alone would have made the book significant, but Amadiumes careful historical and ethnographic research, carried out in the early 1980s, led to the production of an excellent ethnography. More importantly, the book offered a new insight and understanding into the nature of sex and gender in an African society, since Amadiume demonstrates convincingly that among the Igbo of the town of Nnobi in eastern Nigeria gender was, at least in the pre-colonial period, not always tied to biological sex, that women could be husbands as well as wives, and that many political roles were ascribed to both sexes.

In the second section of the book, Amadiume considers the impact of colonial rule and conversion to Christianity. Both colonial rulers and missionaries found the existing systems they encountered baffling and sometimes abhorrent. They compared Igbo practices with their own, to the detriment of the former, and even outlawed some customary practices. As a result women in areas like Nnobi lost much of their former power, as reflected for example in titles they could hold, while the ability of an older woman to marry wives whose labour she could command was curtailed. Women were increasingly domesticated and rendered invisible, a situation exacerbated by the increasing importance of the cash economy, which was largely dominated by men.

In the third section, Amadiume considers the post-colonial period, which has seen an increase in what the author terms womens new poverty and mens new wealth. But women have not passively accepted this situation and Amadiume sees grounds for the potential for change, in spite of the prevalence of male dominance among the post-independence rulers of Nigeria. Indeed, in her final section, she makes a number of practical suggestions about ways in which women could once again take their rightful place in both political and economic systems.

Over many years of teaching courses on the anthropology of gender and on feminist theory, I always had Amadiumes book on my reading lists, for a number of reasons. One was that it enabled students to think about gender in a way which was different, whether they were westerners or overseas students. Another was that it enabled gender concepts to be explored in so many different ways: ideology and religion, language, politics and economics.