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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Female Wage Earners and Separate Resource Structures in Post Oil Boom Nigeria |
Author: | Okeke, Philomina E. |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | Dialectical Anthropology |
Volume: | 22 |
Issue: | 3-4 |
Period: | December |
Pages: | 373-387 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Nigeria |
Subjects: | gender relations Igbo women workers Women's Issues Economics and Trade Labor and Employment Development and Technology economics Cultural Roles Marital Relations and Nuptiality Family Life Sex Roles |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006870625958 |
Abstract: | This article examines how Igbo female wage earners are rising to the challenges imposed by economic decline and structural adjustment in an environment of separate resource structures. The practice of separate resource structures should provide female wage earners with the autonomy to manage their own finances, but the experiences of a number of Igbo women suggest that this is not necessarily the case. The analysis draws from a series of in-depth interviews with twelve university-educated women. The first section analyses the practice of separate resource structures in dual wage-earner households in Igboland, Nigeria. It shows that, on the whole, dual wage earners manage to work through conflicting loyalties; couples share responsibilities within the nuclear household, but maintain a relatively safe distance from each other's extra-nuclear interests. The second section outlines the conjugal division of economic responsibilities in the households of the women interviewed. The final section looks at women's increasing economic burdens with respect to both their contribution to family subsistence and their economic security. It argues that it is not only women's economic security that is at stake; their economic security is a necessary condition for their participation in national development. Notes, ref. |