Women

Women

There are several ways one can look at the status of women in any society. During the last decade at least three approaches, not necessarily mutually exclusive, were discernible. One was to examine the common demographic indicators that give an overall picture of women's relative standing vis-à-vis men. According to the 1981 census, the se ratio stood at 933 females per 1000 males. The literacy rate was 46.89 per cent for males and 24.82 per cent for females. The life expectancy at birth for females was 50 years and for males it was 50.9 years. The average age at marriage for females was 18.32 years and for males it was 23.27 years. The female work participation rate was 13.99 percent and the male work participation rate was 51.62 percent. Figures regarding economic participation rate for women have very little meaning as the definition of a worker has changed from one census to other. (Rehana Ghadially 1988 p.5) As a study by Australian demographer John C. Caldwell powerfully demonstrates, for both men and women in Ibo traditional society many children have been the surest and stronger source of prestige. In the Ibo society, remaining unmarried is an extreme social divergence. It was considered central to man's nature to beget, and women's to conceive and bear, children. For women, marriage traditionally brought a variety of economic responsibilities and often only one source of both honor and security: their children. According to the Ibo tradition the man had to pay the family of the bride a bride price to secure her marriage.

The payment was given in exchange for the economic value of woman to her husband in her labor and her children. Hence, for the husband and wife marriage was as much as anything else an economic compact. (James L. Newman, 1995, p.122) Customs governing division of labor, rights to land and to children varied widely. However, while a woman was married her husband generally held her labor and its fruits firmly within its grasp. In addition, the brides usually went to live with her husband's kin, and she was dependent on this group in which she was a virtual outsider. (Jennifer Seymour Whitaker, 1990, p. 99) Once involved with her new household, an Ibo woman often lived a life quite separate economically from that of her husband, in which the basic unit was herself and her children. She was usually expected to cook...

... middle of paper ...

...king the money to pay tax and to buy useful things as farming tools, wives and sisters were left with more work than before: in gardens, in the fields, in the home.

Through all the long social crisis of the Great Depression and the Second World War, women had to bear the heaviest burdens of poverty and oppersion. These burdens, for example, are depicted in Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood. Gross inequalities between men and women have generally prevailed. However, some progress has been made against them, and continues to be made. Girls and young women found new educational opportunities, and adult women have also joined in the drive for education, attending literacy classes and various forms of vocational training, while a wider range of jobs has become available for women in towns. Beyond this, women, too, have begun to join to gether in self defence so as to claim, and sometimes, get a better status in society. Several African countries, by the 1980's, had vigorous organizations for the advancement of women, staffed and run by women, forming their own programs for the benefit of women. None of this had been possible during colonial times. (Basil Davidson, 1994, p.186-191)