Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2001)
ISSN: 1530-5686
AFRICAN WOMEN AND POWER: REFLECTIONS ON THE PERILS OF UNWARRANTED COSMOPOLITANISM
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Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2001) ISSN: 1530-5686 AFRICAN WOMEN AND POWER: REFLECTIONS ON THE PERILS OF UNWARRANTED COSMOPOLITANISM |
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Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome
As we embark on the journey of stimulating the flows of new and different, critical and timely intellectual ideas in this maiden issue of Jenda, I suggest that we look both to the past and future. From the past, we consider the record of victories won, gains made, and challenges that continue to move us to action. In the future lies the possibility of making change through the inspirational force of ideas, the mobilizational impetus of action that points out the shortcomings of the past and present, and provides worthwhile alternatives. It is an exciting new day. Given the optimism that I have for the future, the perilous and unwarranted cosmopolitanism of African women scholars and activists is uppermost in my mind. I bring up this issue as opposed to any other because of the changes and developments that are afoot in this new, global world. As with any new phenomenon, globalization presents numerous possibilities of benefits to humanity. It also challenges us in a myriad of ways.
We all know that we live in a global world. Hybridity is in. It has become de rigeur to claim multiple cultures and origins. It is “cool” to be multidimensional and multifaceted. In this bold new age when all people of good will approach a brand new millennium with thoughts of how better to connect with the progressive trends of a new future, what of the woman question? Is there an essential woman out there that is a hybridized amalgamation of all women worldwide? If there is an essential woman, whose stories are presented as representative of this “ideal type”? Is the woman experience monolithic regardless of time and place?
Since the ethos of the age of postmodern globalism is to consider the local and how it crosscuts with the global, it is worthwhile to foreground cosmopolitanism, globalization and hybridity. Cosmopolitanism implies multiple origins, being worldly, being au courant, being experienced in the ways of the world, being complex rather than simple, being all-inclusive, pervasive, being able to exist in, and affect the whole world. Globalization also implies the ability to cover a wide scope. It implies pervasiveness, inclusivity, and worldwide trends. Similarly, hybridity also carries notions of melding, mixing, and multiple origins.
For majority of scholars, globalization indicates a coordination of the world’s political, economic, political and even social systems. It is a coming together of the world in a never-before-experienced manner. Within this burgeoning new world, gender in conceptual analysis and its application and applicability to African women’s issues and experiences must be subjected to critical examination. Gender studies lay open the possibility of considering the world’s women as one single unit of analysis, and it has been deployed in this manner. It also creates the distinct opportunity of looking at the world’s women in its regions and subregions in their particularity. The particularity of women’s experiences is especially relevant if we take seriously the contention that gender is socially constructed. Naturally, such construction, if it is to be conceptually relevant, has to be understood as emerging out of the particularity of a people’s history. It ought to stand to reason then that in each and every instance, constructions of gender react to and reflect the social, political and economic realities of the cultures from which they are drawn. Why then does one see constructions of gender that seem to be made from one cookie cutter? Why the presumption of universality and essentialism? The universalization and essentialization of the woman question erases or at best, trivializes the natural multidimensionality of social, economic and political realities of entire areas of the world.
The homogenization of the woman question is primarily attributable to the Western hegemony in scholarship, funding and in the production of knowledge. In consequence, hybridity and cosmopolitanism have become the new and dominant ideologies. Consequently, many studies are churned out that explain not very much and Africa remains an enigma in the Western imagination. More seriously, Africa becomes even more of an enigma when Africans favor a variety of hybridity and cosmopolitanism that erases. African cultural philosophies are irrelevant to the constitution of ideals and desired values.
To fully underscore the importance of this observation, Babalolá Olábîyí Yáì’s recommendation to scholars of African studies that they avoid the promotion of “dubious universals” as well as “intransitive discourses” that refuse to ground the concepts and ideas that are deployed in their analysis in African indigenous philosophies is particularly apposite. Yáì’s injunction is that “We Africanist scholars must humbly acknowledge the limitations of our models and methodologies. The overwhelming nature of the colonial situations and ideologies of which we all are victims – but to which through constant vigilance we must endeavor not to remain involuntary accomplices–induces us to inadvertently smuggle false issues, nonissues, and extraneous notions and concepts into the disciplines of African studies.” (Yáì, 1999). This injunction is particularly relevant to the scholars and activists that undertake gender studies. Doing good research and worthwhile advocacy involves more than good intentions. It also involves more than the deployment of the most current theories. Instead, scholars ought to constantly ask themselves, are the issues that they pursue so vigorously flawed because they meet with the conditions that Yáì established above? Are we sufficiently decolonized to engage the subject matter meaningfully? Or do we value cosmopolitanism, hybridity and unquestioned adherence to globality so much that we become blinded to the reality, choosing instead to focus on how far Africa is from some universal ideal that is utterly irrelevant?
In order to begin to challenge the pervasive cosmopolitanism that homogenizes and essentializes women’s experiences, I will explore the multiple ways in which African women exercise and deploy power, and this, despite the social, economic and political constraints that they face. Thus, I will address both constraints and possibilities that shape the actions and reactions of African women.
It has become generally accepted that women are disadvantaged and discriminated against worldwide. One of the most valuable contributions of feminism as a movement is that it lays out the nature, form and extent the evidences that exist of man’s inhumanity to woman. Contemporary feminists have shown evidence of the inequities and inequalities that proliferate in all parts of the world against women (Rosaldo & Lamphere, 1974). Against this background, I ask the questions: Do women have any power in African society? Under what circumstances? These questions are asked because I am a Yorùbá woman who in my personal experience, is aware that the studies that posit the automatic powerlessness of women as a group vis-á-vis all men do not explain my own experience or my understanding of history. Many of the studies also may indicate the existence of oppression as a very real human situation, but do not give any idea of the richness and vibrancy of life as it exists, and as I know it. I believe that the same can be said of some ethnic groups in Africa.
To demonstrate what I mean, let me quickly make the following observations:
There have been studies in the past which have made the claim that indeed, some women are powerful. Such studies then provide us with examples of women who have taken leadership roles in their societies. From these studies, it is clear that when we speak of women, we ought to specify that there are class differences among women. These class differences imply that some women are granted social, political, and economic privileges that are not open to other women. These privileges are also not open to majority of men in society. Examples abound all through Africa (Awe, 1992; Johnson-Odim & Mba, 1997).
The point is also increasingly being made that if we take as a starting point, the feminist contention that gender is socially constructed, then, constructions of gender must take on different forms in different geographical locations. Thus, the gendering of society in Africa does not automatically take on the same form as we observe in the western world. This also is an important observation that informs my work. Since Africa is composed of 52 countries, and Nigeria, the country with the largest population has over 250 ethnic groups, there are cultural differences that make the social constructions of any categories more complex than in the West. What we need to do in Africa is to conduct studies that deliberately focus on each of the continent’s ethnic groups in analysis that consider the relevance and applicability of gender. We cannot make conclusions on the conditions in Africa without doing this initial groundwork.
Let me also hasten to note that virtually all of Africa was colonized. Whatever we observe in Africa today is a combination of pre-colonial culture overlaid by elements absorbed as a result of the experience of colonization.
To return to the question of women’s power in society, and the circumstances under which they may have power, and the influence of women’s power or weakness, I make the following initial claims: Women may have power in society in the following institutions: the family, kinship group, community, ethnic group, state. Instances of power would include women’s power as mothers vis-á-vis children, regardless of age. As wives in a polygynous family, the first wife has more power than other co-wives. As political officials, there are examples of women who are queen mothers e.g. the Edo of Nigeria, the Buganda of Uganda, the Akan of Ghana. Women can also have economic power based on their ability to own the means of production, or the ability to control the gains that they make from exchange. There are also examples of women’s ritual power. Some are priestesses, deities.
A second set of issues arises. Nzegwu’s recommendations suggest the urgency of recovering Igbo traditions from the morass that has bogged them down. Such recovery can be construed as facilitating the improvement in our understanding of not just what the mores and ethos of Igbo cultural traditions are, but of the restoration of the philosophies and deep meanings that underlie social practices. Recovery could also mean salvation. In this case, scholarly responsibility entails saving from obscurity those valuable practices that define the essence of the human experience in African traditions. Being able to do this entails healing the wounds inflicted by past skewed and biased interpretations, and the preservation of the values that undergird the recognition of the importance of women in society. It entails the reestablishment and the revival of ideals, and the renewal of values. What Nzegwu says about Igbo traditions can be said for other African ethnic groups.
If we begin from the contention that women are commonly oppressed by male patriarchy, what are the defining characteristics of femaleness and maleness, strength, and weakness? Have these characteristics remained the same over time? When did they change? Since this is a work in progress, I will raise these questions in the course of my research, which will focus specifically on the Yorùbá of Southern Nigeria. I will not necessarily answer them definitively, except to point to the exciting new research on gender among the Òyó Yorùbá by Oyerónké Oyewùmí (1997). Oyewùmí argues that among the Òyó Yorùbá , seniority, and not gender is the definitive category. To apply Western gender categories to Òyó Yorùbá society is to erase the real lived experiences of people. This is because as a woman, a person may be powerful in some respects, and weak in others. For example, one and the same woman may be a daughter, wife, mother, sister, grandmother, mother-in- law, political official. Each status carries with it advantages and disadvantages. Such advantages and disadvantages are held vis-á-vis other individuals in society, who may be male or female. Women are not precluded from exercising power, even women who are poor.
Explanations are required. As a daughter, a woman has rights in her natal family vis- á-vis the wives in the family. As a matter of fact, other women who marry into this kinship group refer to her and all the “children of the house” as “oko”. Women who are oko have privileges and entitlements that arise from this status. They also have rights to their family’s land, inherit from their father through the unit that is headed by a mother (in a polygynous family). As ìyàwó, this same woman has little power vis-á-vis her sisters in law and mother in law. She gives them the respect that is due to these statuses. As first wife, a woman has more power vis-á-vis subsequent wives. She no longer has to undertake the tedium of everyday chores when junior wives are married. She ought to be consulted in all matters including the marrying of the co-wives and family decisions. As mother, a woman has real power over her children, regardless of their age. As a sister, a woman has power vis-á-vis younger siblings. She has less power vis-á- vis older ones. As a mother in law, she has enormous power vis-á-vis her daughter in law. She can decide to use this power in a just manner, or choose to be oppressive vis- á-vis her daughters in law. As a grandmother, a woman is respected by all that are junior to her as having attained the heights of old age, and thus as having become wise. As the Yorùbá say, ó ti g’òkè àgbà.
As a woman, there are conditions under which one is legitimately able to exercise power. However, this does not imply that each and everyone will perform identically. Personal capacity matters. Also, social and political institutions can intervene to empower or disempower individuals and groups in society. When we also consider the question of what constitutes the defining characteristics of maleness and femaleness, these characteristics may not be attached to males or females as a function of institutions assigning roles in an immutable, unchanging manner, but as part of a fluid, hegemonic process where the hegemons of the day manufacture consent by defining for everyone else what our common sense understandings of the world should be. As a result of the operation of a hegemonic process, powerful groups in society can then generate a definition of strength and weakness and the assignment of gender roles to fit the common sense understandings of the world. What those roles are for African in the pre-colonial era differ from what they came to be in the colonial era, which also differ from what we observe today. My point is that it is important to understand that tradition and modernity ought not to be used interchangeably with Africa (the former) and the West (the latter). Most scholars in treating Africa as the sphere of tradition and the West as that of modernity fall into the fallacy of claiming that African societies will continuously wallow in “traditionalism.” Thus, they lose the everyday sense of ’modern’ as ’new’ as ’contemporary’ as something that each and every society undergoes without implying that any/all new evolutionary change is western. My point is that we must de-link modern and modernity from the western so that we can meaningfully tract changes that are homegrown, neighbors-influenced, and/or Asia-inspired from those that are western-influenced. If we do not do this then we run the additional risk of conceding autonomy to the west.
To all intents and purposes, what we see in African countries today is that people, including scholars draw a dichotomizing line between modernity and tradition which affects not only practices, values, principles and behaviors that humans manifest, but also the geographical spaces that they occupy. The city under this dichotomizing scheme is modern, the village, traditional. Wearing a Yorùbá ìró and bùbá is traditional, wearing a skirt and blouse is modern. Cooking with a gas stove, using aluminum and stainless steel pots and pans is modern, using wood in an àdògán, clay pots, some kinds of cast iron and wooden spoons is traditional. If a woman cooks, that is tradition. If a man does, it’s modern. If a person lives in a mud hut, that’s traditional, in a concrete house with corrugated iron with galvanized steel roofing, it’s modern. A traditional woman is weakened by traditional structures. She has to cook, clean, take care of children and the old, the sick and visitors. She cannot have any perception of herself as an individual. The community defines her. She is the property of her husband, a jural minor, is likely to have had some genital surgery imposed on her, to have experienced high levels of infant mortality, to be illiterate, poor, overworked, unappreciated, and totally marginalized. A modern woman is not.
The question we need to ask and answer is: If the traditional woman is traditional, what makes her so? That she resides in the traditional milieu? When did tradition stop and modernity begin? Did tradition weaken people due to some intrinsic quality in tradition, while the logic of modernity is intrinsically to empower, to free the individual from parochial ties that ultimately marginalize? Most people tend to date modernity from the 15 th Century contact between Africa and the West, a contact that ultimately denuded all Africans, male and female, of any meaningful power. If we think of tradition and modernity as constructs that define a moment of domination, we begin to see that what we take as “tradition” today has a strong overlay of the “modern”. What one observes in Africa then is not necessarily tradition versus modernity, but the dragging of Africans into the European- dominated world system to perform the menial tasks. The dragging in was not only the exercise of physical power but of hegemonic power where the new conquerors influenced society in a profound way to define the conquered as “savages” and themselves as the “civilized liberators”. Tradition and modernity, properly construed would include an understanding that each and every human society has the old and the new. This is true for Africa as it is for the West. In point of fact, the Yorùbá conceptualize change and the motive forces that drive it in human society as combining with continuity to constitute the norm. They speak of òlàjú (enlightenment), ìdàgbàsókè (growth), ìlosíwájú (progress/moving forward) at the same time as they use the adage: “kò s’óun titun kan l’ábé oòrùn (there’s nothing new under the sun), e jé ká seé bí wón ti nseé, k’ó le rí b’ó ti nrí” (let’s do it as they do it [as it ought to be done] so that it turns out as it is ought to). The Yorùbá also distinguish between ayé òde òní (today’s world) and ayé àtijó (the world of the past). Similar claims can be made of other African ethnic groups. Change is inevitable, and social practices are constructed and re-constructed in response to the challenges that confront a people. African peoples are not isolated from the currents of change and their societies, and culture. They ought not to be studied as such.
As “savages”, the conquered were doomed to become eternally damned, but were redeemed by their benevolent conquerors. Lest we think that this perception defines a moment in the dim past, it exists today in form of the failure to recognize that pre-colonial African societies within Africa were heterogeneous in nature. The traits that are now attributed to modernity could be found in many. Those traits were not only discouraged by the modernity- wielding Europeans. They were destroyed. The crisis-ridden societies that struggled to survive the assault of modernity by holding on to some practices, fashioning new ones to ward off the calamities that beset them and to adopt and adapt, came to be presented as traditional, exhibiting the pathological traits that we have come to identify with backwardness. This brings to mind the question of whether it is possible for a society to be perpetually stuck in a “traditional” mode that brooks no change. In contrast to the presumption that tradition is an adjective that carries a geographical baggage that lugs around the African continent, I recommend that we deal with the concrete reality that acknowledge and explain the modernizing processes in the society, the provenance of which may be traced to neighboring groups within the African continent. There are matters and issues on which the Yoruba can learn from the Igbo, the Baganda, the Ewe, Fante and any other ethnic groups in the African continent, and vice versa. The claim being made here is that modernity can be defined by, or ascribed to these forces that are intra-continental and even intra ethnic. Africa cannot be locked into an unchanging traditionalism that bears no resemblance to reality. It is within this framework that I examine the role of African women in society.
When an entire continent has been exploited in its human and material resources as profoundly as happened in Africa, it is to be expected that the colonizer after conquest, through trickery and brutal wars of pacification, attempts to establish its hegemony such that its values, principles, and ideas become accepted as the common sense. The behaviors and attitudes preferred by the hegemon become the norm, and by the same token, those of the conquered become unacceptable, illegitimate, backward. Where in the past, women were able to play some important roles in society, with colonization, these are defined out of existence. Where the religion of the colonized had key roles for women to play both as deities and priestesses, the imposition of Christianity ruled these out. Whereas motherhood formerly implied power, it now came to be seen as an encumbrance. Whereas motherhood and participation in the economy were not mutually exclusive, it soon came to be as Africa moved inexorably toward Westernization. Although being a woman was not coterminous with being the weaker sex, this became the norm. Indeed, one of the most important institutional upon which a woman’s claim of power could be made - motherhood- became irrelevant because of the separation between the public and private spheres that was an integral part of the colonial enterprise. As an actor that was restricted to the private realm, women were domesticated and subject to the discipline of those recognized as the heads of households - men.
We look now at women all over Africa and maintain that “tradition” is the problem. If we are among the more progressive, we argue that women are oppressed by patriarchy that besets them from two sources - the tradition of patriarchy and that set in motion by colonization. To make this claim depends on the extent to which we can maintain that the societies of Africa at the inception of colonization were “traditional”. To claim that they remained pristine, immutable and unchanging, conservative and reactionary in the face of centuries of countervailing influences from within and without. To do this, I would argue is wrong. If we study history, we find that between the prehistoric age and the15 th Century, history reveals evidences of continuity and change. Thus we must revoke our commitment to a dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Change is as much a part of the pre-colonial as it is of postcolonial Africa. We can examine the question of the pace of change, however, and the extent to which phenomena such as the growth in the numbers of the urban centers and the introduction of large-scale mining and plantation agriculture generated deep shifts that were extremely dislocating.
To specifically address the power of women in society, and take the various roles of women that were previously identified as indicators of instances where they may be able to exercise power, as mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, mothers in law, political official, owners of capital, monarchs, nobility/aristocracy, deities, religious leaders. What does the evidence show? First let’s think of the ideal, of what is possible under the best possible scenario. Unfortunately, I will only be able to speak briefly on women as mothers.
It is widely posited that motherhood is important in all of Africa’s societies or communities. Of course, the requirement that all women ought to be mothers may also operate in an oppressive manner to discipline those who are not able to bear children. I want to start with the ideal. Ideally, what are the powers, privileges, and entitlements that motherhood gives a woman? The Yorùbá say, Ìyá ni wúrà, baba ni jígí [Mother is gold, father is a mirror]. Mother is gold, strong, valuable, true, central to a child’s existence, wise, also self-denying. As a mother, ìkúnlè abiyamo - the kneeling position that is assumed at the moment of birth - confers privileges on a mother. Ideally, mothers ought to be respected, ought to be heeded, ought to be able to ask their offspring to transcend the limits of doing just enough. Mothers also ought to be respected by society at large. The very act of childbirth is to say the very least, one of the most difficult things that a human being undertakes in life. Prior to this, a mother carries the child in uteri for nine months, and subsequently, nurtures the child, guaranteeing not only physical survival, but moral development and the development of a social conscience.
Among the Yorùbá, motherhood confers privileges, privileges that hark back to the very foundations of society and women’s presumed roles in it. Women symbolize fertility, fecundity, and fruitfulness. Women also are feared. They are believed to be capable of deploying, even of having the capacity to unleash powerful forces of darkness. Those who have studied the rituals associated with Gèlèdé ritual performances among the Ègbádò and Ìgbómìnà demonstrate the underpinning of female power and the visible demonstration of the power of women for both good and evil, the power to create and destroy, to critique social behaviour and to use the power of satire to check transgressors. Gèlèdé is a display of the power of women to create new life and to undermine the very essence of society if not properly worshiped (Lawal 1996). A similar portrayal of women’s power in the spiritual realm is observable in Ifá, in the worship of Yemoja, Oya, Òsun, all very powerful female deities. They are referred to as Ìyá by all their worshipers and devotees who are both men and women. These deities are also ministered to by both men and women. Priests and priestesses who are fully initiated into the service of these òrìsà are referred to as the ìyàwó, prior to gaining the full stature of priest, When male Yorùbá priests are in this final preparatory stage, they dress in “women’s” clothing, a factor that has generated the observation among some scholars that this entails cross-dressing. Moreover, the donning of women’s clothing by such priests is regarded as a mark of transvestitism. (Matory 1994: 6-7, 183-215; Wescott and Morton-Williams, 1962, 25; Drewal, 1992, 121, 137, 177, 185, 190).
As aya or ìyàwó [wives] who marry into an ìdílé [patrilineage] and have patrilocal residence in an agbo’lé [family compound], Yorùbá women are essentially the outsiders within the ebí [family]. One side of the equation that most analysts and scholars fail to consider is also that a male that marries into an ìdílé does not have superior rights within that ìdílé to the women in the ìdílé. As outsiders, they only participate in decision making through the agency of their wives who are part of the ìdílé. There are also social obligations that men who are outsiders to the ìdílé by virtue of being married into it must perform. To concentrate our attention on women, being an ìyàwó is the site where women’s biological reality of being sexually and anatomically female conjoins with the social reality of being women, and thus less powerful than males. As ìyàwó, a woman who marries into the ìdílé has a lower status than the oko [male and female members of the ìdílé within the ebí, a status that pays no attention to anatomical maleness, or femaleness but one that privileges membership in the ìdílé. This is why all the descendants of the ìdílé have superior rights to those who marry into it. All ìyàwós labor can be demanded by their husbands (including all members of the patriliny) and is expected to be graciously given. ìyàwó also occupy a lower status, a fact that is demonstrated by the deference shown to oko (all members of the patrilineage into which they marry). Due to the erasure of the philosophical underpinnings of Yorùbá social practices that has occurred over time, it is necessary to explain to many educated Yorùbá that the reason why mothers call their male and female children oko is an indicator of the mother’s outsider status and an affirmation of the children’s insider position vis- a-vis their own mother. Despite the intrusion of new principles and institutions over time, such relationships can be observed in contemporary Yorùbá families. When women act as oko within the ìdílé, they are often presented by scholarly observers as examples of woman’s inhumanity to woman (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1996).
Among ìyàwó, the first wife is more powerful than others by virtue of being the first- comer into the family, and thus having seniority vis-á-vis other ìyàwó within the family. Of course, since no family is immune to the effects of politics, there are cases in which the favorite wife threatens the supremacy of the first wife. Wives have also been known to cooperatively challenge an unjust oko, whether spouse or the members of the ìdílé. What is clear in the relations among women is that one cannot make an ad hoc assumption about the commonality of the female experience.
As members of an ìdílé into which other women marry, the women are regarded as the oko [husbands], and thus have a great deal of power. They are entitled by the norms of Yorùbá society, to demand and expect the labor of the wives of the family. In return, they are expected to comport themselves with dignity, and to lawó [be open-handed or generous] toward their ìyàwó. The categorization of women members of an ìdílé as oko is not to be taken as indicating any sexual relations with the ìyàwó. Instead, it indicates that Yorùbá societies do not have the same gendering imperatives that one finds in the West. Unfortunately, since most scholars of Africa have the tendency to adopt Western categories as given, and since they apply the categories without inquiring into whether they fit, Western-style gender categorizations have become de rigeur in African scholarship.
As deities and ritual leaders, there is no gendered differences in the social experiences of men and women. Many Yorùbá deities combine male and female properties and qualities. There are even examples of one and the same deity being designated male in certain locales within Yorùbáland and as females in others (Ìdòwú, 1962). Oya, one of the principal deities of the Yorùbá, for whom the river Niger is named Odò Oya by the Yorùbá is reputed to have been one of the wives of Sango, the fourth monarch of the Yorùbá. Her symbols are two naked swords and buffalo horns. For Johnson, “As thunder and lightning are attributed to Sango, so tornado and violent thunderstorms, rending trees and levelling high towers and houses are attributed to Oya. They signify her displeasure.” (Johnson, 36). These are not female characteristics in a gendered world that sees women as kind and gentle, nurturing and docile. Within the Yorùbá philosophy of life, there is nothing intrinsically male and female. An anatomical male can be both gentle and ruthless and so can an anatomical female. What matters more is for such qualities to be deployed appropriately.
Political power is not limited to men within Yorùbá society. Yorùbá princesses can marry commoners who may then be conferred with titles (including obaship, as Johnson claims is the case of the Olowu, son of the first born of Oduduwa (a princess) and her father’s aláwo [priest] (Johnson, 8). There are still contemporary examples of female ìjòyè [chiefs] abound. Ìyálôde, Erelú, Yèyé Oba are just a few of such female positions. Today, as with the Obaships, these positions are denuded of power, being only ceremonial vestiges of their pre-colonial manifestations. That they remain, and that the holders attract the respect and admiration of the public is an indicator of the persistence of norms and values that do not conform to a Western-delimited understanding of gender. The Òyó empire and other Yorùbá states show us evidence of the institutionalization of women’s political power into centralized political realms in a manner that demonstrate that anatomical and biological femaleness was not considered coterminous with a disadvantaged gender. Social status and power was multiply determined and whether an individual exercised power depended on scope and domain. As Ìyálôde, we have the examples of Efúnsetán Aníwúrà of Ibadan, Madam Tinúbú of Abéòkúta (Awé, 1977) as powerful women of their times who exercised the power with which their office was endowed, and in the case of Efúnsetán Aníwúrà, were not averse to engaging in power struggle and participating actively in war, albeit through surrogates, as did many of their male counterparts.
In the Òyó empire, the Ìlàrí, who were variously regarded as the keepers of the king’s head, or his bodyguard were both male and female. According to Johnson, “Every male Ìlàrí has a female counterpart who is called his companion. The Ìlàrís themselves by courtesy call them their “mother.” They are both created at one and the same time and they are supposed to seek each other’s interest, although there must be no intimacy between them; the female Ìlàrís being the denizens of the King’s harem; the only attention they are allowed to pay each other is to make exchange of presents at the yearly festivals.” (62). In addition, Johnson also identified “Ladies of the Palace” who included eight titled ladies, eight Priestesses, other ladies of rank, Ayaba (king’s wives). As residents in the palace, all the women were termed Ayaba, which is no indication of their being married to him. As indicated by Johnson, the highest ranked women are listed in order of importance as follows:
As the king’s official mother, the Ìyá Oba acted the part of a mother and was empowered to jointly worship Òrun with the Oba and Bashòrun every September. According to Johnson, “She is the feudal head of the Bashòrun. Great deference is the due of the Ìyá Oba, but the Ìyá kéré wields more power within the palace, being in charge of the royal treasury as well as the royal insignia and all paraphernalia used on state occasions”. Being in control meant that she could prevent any state ceremony when the Oba incurred her wrath. She was also the official mother of all Ìlàrí, be they male or female. In recognition of her motherhood, they were created in her quarters(63). Ìyá kéré was also the feudal head of Ìséyìn, Ìwó and Ògbómòsó.
Among the Ìjèbú, women are members of the Òsugbó, the same institution as the Ègbá Ògbóni, of which women are also members. In the pre-colonial era, this institution served the functions of schooling members in oratory and jurisprudence. It also functioned as the national court of appeals. It had jurisdiction over criminal cases and was mandated to execute those convicted where warranted. The Ògbóni house was also used as a state prison when necessary. Most importantly, the institution was mandated to prevent monarchical absolutism as well as mass lawlessness (Ayandele, 1966, particularly p. 170). In the new Òyó empire, a female official of the Ògbóni represented the Aláàfin and reported back to him on the council’s deliberations. The institutional function of the Ògbóni included serving as a check against the abuse of power Òyó Mèsì.
The institution of Ìyálóde has replaced the important institutionalized women’s political positions of the pre-colonial era. Among the Ìjèbú, the Erelú serves in the same capacity. Although today’s Ìyálóde still have a great deal of power, particularly in the sphere of exchange and commerce, where market administration and adjudication are their purview, and even though we know of the famous Ìyálóde of yore like Efúnsetán Aníwúrà of Ìbàdàn, Madam Tinúbú of Abéòkúta, this position too is denuded of much of the formal powers that it had in the past. Today, the Ìyálóde is the title that denotes seniority among the female political officials in some Yoruba indigenous governance systems. In Lagos, the Iyalode remains an important official, being subordinate in standing only to the Oba of Lagos. The Ìyálóde, also participates actively in the appointment and installation of the Oba. Among the Òndó, women have a hierarchical line of chiefs that parallels men’s chiefships. Oyewumi’s research also draws on evidence of women monarchs among the Òyó Yorùbá (Oyewumi, 1998).
Yorùbá women have gained more recognition as holders, controllers and wielders of economic power than for any other kind of power that they exercise. Many studies point to the active participation and contribution of Yorùbá women in the economy, but also accurately decry the lack of recognition by postcolonial Nigerian governments for this contribution (Awé 1992). Curiously, active participation in the economy has also not been successfully parlayed into postcolonial political power (Awé, 1992). The same assessment can be made of women’s experiences throughout Africa, which ought to be translated into a realization of the depth of the success of the colonial project. A homogenized existence that does not reflect the pre-colonial realities now runs rampant because there is no observable difference between one African country and others (this is in spite of South Africa’s appointment of many women into political positions and the election of many female legislators. What is needed is not necessarily just more women in power, but having many women in power who have a deep understanding of the needs, goals and objectives of women (as multiple as these may be given differences in their class and regional interests). This is a difficult, but not impossible agenda that will continue to challenge us in the future
When viewed from the perspective of scholarly works on gender, we see that the gendering of society may in and of itself render women as mothers not only powerless but as marginal to social, political and economic life. The burdens of motherhood may be so heavy that a woman is never able to develop a sense of her self. She is most likely to be impoverished, most likely to be irrelevant. Constantly, we are reminded that women are the weaker sex. Wars affect them more, economic crises prostrate them, they are the epitome of wretchedness. Statistics are deployed to confirm the reality of these depictions. I am not denying that women are burdened, I am not contesting the existence of patriarchy, I am not saying that there are no instances of gender-based oppressions in contemporary Yorùbá society. What I claim, the assumption that will undergird this work in progress, is that women in African society exercise power in multiple ways that are difficult to acknowledge, or recognize when we use the tools that are designed to study Western societies. In order to properly study African societies, we have to as an initial condition, consider the reality that stares us in the face - African societies are different. We can learn valuable lessons on the human condition if we take them seriously. Gender is not deployed in the same manner in African societies as it is in the west. There are multiple conditions that we cannot explain with the tools of western scholarship.
I contend that if we really understand Yorùbá culture. we will find a way of conveying meaning to what is observed in a manner that does what Yáì refers to as the task of the gbénugbénu (orator/verbal carver/critic) who continues the gbénàgbénà’s (carver) job after the latter has completed carving a piece. The gbénugbénu as the orator, the one who carves language with the mouth in presenting the verbal gloss on the work of the sculptor must understand and successfully convey the meaning of concepts in a manner that captures both the spirit and letter of the philosophical intent of the people in whose culture a practice is grounded. Most Africanists neglect to be worthwhile gbénugbénu when they invent out of whole cloth, the relevance of practices that they only understand within the scope of western ideological systems of thought. Unfortunately, the desire to hybridize, to be cosmopolitan and to be global leads African scholars into the pitfall of taking these Western glosses as gospel, and contributing to their dissemination in a highly unconscious, unreflecting manner. Further, if we contrast the cross dressing claim with the fact that when Catholic and protestant priests wear robes, they are not considered as cross-dressing. In addition, when Catholic priests become the “brides of Christ” at the final moment of their initiation, and are given rings that symbolize this relationship, it is not cast as transvestitism. Why then use such characterization to describe Yorùbá ritual? In large part, this is due to scholars use of concepts that are meaningful in the context of their own social and historical experience. To some degree, it is also due to a lack of genuine and deep understanding of philosophical underpinnings of external phenomena.
Another very important factor to realize is that if we accept that contemporary women are commonly oppressed by patriarchy, the agency that is primarily responsible is the state. The contemporary state was not created by Africans. It is a colonial imposition. Being so imposed, it bore, to paraphrase Amina Mama, the racial hierarchy and gender politics of nineteenth century Europe as a result of which Africa was “indoctrinated into all-male European administrative systems, and the insidious paternalism of the new religious and educational systems” This “has persistently affected all aspects of social, cultural, political and economic life in postcolonial African states.” (Mama, 47).
When Yáì talks about the duties of the gbénugbénu as complementing the gbénàgbénà, his injunctions ought to be taken to heart. Not to do so is to directly embrace the perils of cosmopolitanism and hybridization. The consequences for African gender scholars are dire and calamitous since they portend rootlessness, disjointed-ness and profound loss of autonomy. Although my focus in this paper is on gender studies, the problems are not limited to this area, but apply to the all disciplines under the rubric of African studies. If we do not maintain constant vigilance against unwarranted cosmopolitanism and rootless hybridization, what results is a profound lack of self-determination from the level of the individual scholar up to the level of the nation. Thus we find examples of scholars and entire countries that take up the theories, concepts and solutions that were designed to explain and solve problems in other places with historically distinct legacies and embrace them wholesale, and without much critical examination. Under the lens of those theories and concepts, everything African begins to look absurd and pathological. Under the influence of the imported solutions, African states and societies reel from one botched remedy to the next. Cosmopolitan and hybridized scholars then turn on the powerful imported lenses once again to proclaim that “tradition” is the problem.
Finally, I appeal to my fellow laborers in the fields of the academy to pose, and examine the same questions that I raised from a variety of African locations. To the extent that we do, we will produce the revolutionary, groundbreaking analysis that is possible, yet neglected thus far.
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Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.
Citation Format
Okome, Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké (2001). AFRICAN WOMEN AND POWER: REFLECTIONS ON THE PERILS OF UNWARRANTED COSMOPOLITANISM. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: 1, 1.