Structural adjustment and female wage labour in the Nigerian textile industry

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Structural adjustment and female wage labour in the Nigerian textile industry
Authors:	Olukoshi, Adebayo Olukoshi, Hussainatu
Year:	1989
Periodical:	Zeitschrift für Afrikastudien
Issue:	4
Pages:	25-35
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Nigeria
Subjects:	women workers economic policy textile industry
Abstract:	In a bid to contain Nigeria's economic crisis, the government decided in July 1986, under a great deal of pressure from the IMF and the World Bank, to introduce a comprehensive programme of structural adjustment (SAP). The Nigerian textile industry which, by 1980, was the third largest in Africa, has been particularly hard hit by the adjustment policies of the State. This article examines what this has meant for female textile workers. The evidence obtained from interviews conducted among 11 textile companies in Lagos in September 1988, indicates that the rate of proletarianization of women in the textile industry has slowed down, and that women are more vulnerable to retrenchment than men. This gender discrimination accounts for the decline in women's share of jobs in the textile companies surveyed. The economic crisis and the SAP have thus affected female labourers in the textile industry at two levels - as workers and as women. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in German. (Also published in: Women pay the price: structural adjustment in Africa and the Caribbean, ed. by Gloria Thomas-Emeagwali, Trenton, N.J., 1995, p. 39-51.)