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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate |
Author: | Kriger, Colleen |
Year: | 1993 |
Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 361-401 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Nigeria Northern Nigeria |
Subjects: | gender relations Sokoto polity women textile industry History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Labor and Employment Women's Issues Historical/Biographical Cultural Roles economics arts Sex Roles |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/183099 |
Abstract: | Men and women manufactured the renowned textile products of the Sokoto Caliphate, a nineteenth-century State in northern Nigeria. The numerical distributions of men and women within textile manufacturing were uneven, but not in accordance with the pattern described most frequently in the literature. Offered here is another, more detailed view of textile production. Women were not simply spinners but were also weavers and dyers. Uneven, too, were the geographical distributions of men and women workers. Men skilled in textile manufacturing were widely disseminated throughout the caliphate, as were women spinners; women skilled at weaving and dyeing, however, were concentrated mainly in the southern emirates of Nupe and Ilorin (Nigeria). Similarly, male entrepreneurs organized large-scale textile manufacturing enterprises in the north-central portion of the caliphate while enterprises created by women were located to the south. The evidence reveals that women's work was more varied, more prominent, more highly skilled and more organized than previously thought. Comparative analyses along gender lines show that men's work and women's work were similar in the degree of training required and the levels of skill achieved. But there were substantial differences in the degree to which men and women could mobilize and organize labour. A variety of social and political factors in caliphate society combined to assist men and hinder women in the organization and management of textile manufacturing. App., notes, ref., sum. |