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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Women, Landed Property, and the Accumulation of Wealth in Early Colonial Lagos
Author:Mann, KristinISNI
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.
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