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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Women, Landed Property, and the Accumulation of Wealth in Early Colonial Lagos |
Author: | Mann, Kristin |
Year: | 1991 |
Periodical: | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society |
Volume: | 16 |
Issue: | 4 |
Period: | Summer |
Pages: | 682-706 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Nigeria Great Britain |
Subjects: | colonialism real property women Women's Issues Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Historical/Biographical Cultural Roles |
Abstract: | This article examines the effects of the privatization and commercialization of land that accompanied the expansion of international trade and imposition of colonial rule in West Africa's coastal towns on women's access to land, capital, and labour. The data for the article come from Lagos, 19th-century West Africa's leading commercial and administrative capital, and contemporary Nigeria's federal capital. The author explores how Lagos women were affected in fact by transformations in land tenure and property rights that planners and policymakers frequently associate with development. She also explores the connection in African societies between household and accumulation. She shows that in Lagos, as in certain rural areas, the penetration of European capital produced changes in land tenure and property rights that adversely affected women's control of landed property. She also demonstrates the close relationship in an urban context between access to land and houses and the ability to mobilize capital and labour. Women's inability to compete with men for resources and labour was rooted not only in changes in the ownership of land and organization of credit, but also in women's subordinate position inside male-headed households. Notes, ref. |