I found this on the internet and I know that you cant beleive everything you read, so I am coming to the experts, what is truth (current day truth) and what is fiction (current day fiction):

The status of women

Yoruba women are both autonomous and subordinate to men. Autonomy arises through a fairly rigid sexual division of labour, which excludes women from most agricultural work, and means that traditional women work independently of their husbands and not jointly or cooperatively with them (Lloyd 1974, 37-38). Although a woman traditionally expects her husband to provide her with capital to start trading or to establish her craft, she is her own supervisor. Income derived from her labour is her own - to spend on herself and her children, after fulfilling her obligations to share in purchasing food, clothing, and sundries.

An aspect of the division of labour that is often ignored but which puts women at some economic advantage in Yorubaland is that, except in the case of cash crops, Yoruba social expectation and conjugal etiquette forbids the farmer to carry his own farm products to the market to sell. Any man who does is regarded as a miser. Since it is the wife who sells these items, whatever she declares as a sales profit is what the man will accept. It is not unusual for women to use some of such funds to begin petty trading in other goods as well.

The Western concept of the full-time housewife, who earns no income, is alien to Yoruba tradition, although women in urban areas who cannot find employment do become housewives, and the concept itself has been introduced by Christianity and Islam. In our sample, 10 per cent of mothers of two-year-olds described themselves as "housewives," but only 1 per cent reported earning no income. In Olusanya's study (1981), 34 per cent of the low-income and 15 per cent of the élite group described themselves as fulltime housewives (after reassigning women who identified themselves as both housewives and income earners to a non-housewife category).

In our sample, the mean ratio of father's contribution to food expenditure to the mother's income was 1:8 for the urban, 1:3 for the semi-rural, and 1:17 for the small rural sample. The lower contribution of women among the semirural may reflect their separation from rural agricultural production and from the major urban markets. Husbands and wives traditionally do not pool their finances. On the death of spouses, their individual property does not pass to each other, unless they have been married in the church (Fadipe 1970, 140146). In everyday life, each spouse comes and goes by himself/ herself, without necessarily telling the other one where he or she is going, although wives are expected to announce their intentions more frequently than husbands (Aronson 1980,115).

Despite women's autonomy, however, many aspects of the social system give men greater seniority and control than women. Men are permitted several wives, but women may have only one husband. According to the terms of traditional agriculture, the man controlled the farm labour of his sons by all wives until the time of their marriage. Moreover, according to traditional marriage conventions, a new wife was junior not only to her husband but to all of his lineage members born before the date of her marriage (Fadipe 1970, 114). She was also a subordinate in the domestic domain, where much unpaid labour was expected of her from her husband and his extended family. Young urban wives now prefer living away from their husbands' families because they no longer are willing to take so subservient a part in family life - being subject to running errands at any time, and shopping, fetching water, and cooking for the older women. Urbanism, education, and adherence to Christianity - with monogamy as its marriage tenet - have given women some measure of freedom from the control of the extended family.

Women's economic enterprises typically have been smaller in scale and subordinate to those of men. Despite very high female participation in petty trade, the trading structure has always been stratified to the relative disadvantage of women, with men in charge of most major longdistance trading enterprises. In addition, women were traditionally excluded from most, but not all, traditional political offices (Afonja 1990).

According to Afonja (1990), the Yoruba ideology of kinship and marriage, which operates to the disadvantage of women and which is relatively impervious to change, has greatly influenced the effects of modernization. Women have been denied access to, or control of, the new means of earning income introduced through contact with the West, and their relative position has deteriorated progressively since this contact began. Proportionately fewer girls than boys have attended school or studied to the higher levels. In our sample, the mean years of schooling for the fathers was 6.7, with 25 per cent having completed secondary and 10 per cent not having attended school. Corresponding figures for the mothers were 4.3 years, and 11 per cent and 35 per cent. Beginning with the slave trade, and increasingly thereafter with the introduction of coffee and cocoa, gender inequality among the Yoruba was intensified through increased male control over critical resources. Ye there have been counter-currents to this trend during the giddy years of the petroleum "oil boom," in which women competed and sometimes succeeded in landing bigger oil contracts than did men (Babatunde 1992).

Men used precapitalist systems of control to monopolize the technology, the new knowledge, and the products of capitalistic production of export commodities (Afonja 1990). Women were easy targets for "peasantization" and "proletarianization." With cash cropping, some women have entered commercial farming, but more have been co-opted to work on their husbands' cash crops, to their husbands' financial benefit and to the disadvantage of their own incomegenerating activities. Children's school attendance increases the women's work and financial burden. In short, Afonja states that the rubric of joint financial support for the household remains superimposed on a structure that denies women control of the most critical resources in modern capitalist society.

According to Afonja (199O), the nature-culture mystique for explaining gender inequality is relevant to the Yoruba view of women. This model holds that women are closer to nature by virtue of biological reproduction and that men, as creators of culture, are inherently superior because culture is superior to nature. Babatunde (1992) does not hold this view that procreation becomes the justification for women's inferiority. He demonstrates, instead, that the relatively lower status of females in day-to-day life is reversed in the symbolism of the fertility-enhancing Gelede cult, which honours the powers of older women who are believed to hold control over fertility. These women, past the age of menopause, have the right to speak their minds freely (Fadipe 1970, 116) and potentially are to be feared if they misuse their powers over nature.

Virtue in the form of `'good character" also is idealized as female. In myth she was the Supreme Diety's granddaughter, given in marriage to the oracle divinity. When, after some time, he mistreated her, she returned to her father's house. When the oracle divinity traced her to her hiding place and begged her to return, she refused to return in physical form but promised to abide with him in the invisible form of a helper - i.e. "good character." Good character brings success in life to a man who treats his wives with kindness and affection, takes care of his children, and does what is good (Babatunde 1992, 214).

too long . . anybody wey read am shld please summarize.

all i kept seeing is division of labor and different era/years

Buzy how are u?

buzyDiva:

too long . . anybody wey read am shld please summarize.

all i kept seeing is division or labor and different era/years

Let's share the paragraphs na
Ho do you want only me to read this whole project

Hmm, wish I can help, like Buzydiva says its a looooooooooong tin.

@Lexy,
I dey o . . Canada heat wan kill me.

@eldee,
u are on ur own o
when u finish am, hit me up

@poster

Na novel you copy and paste?

sistawoman:


The status of women

Yoruba women are both autonomous and subordinate to men. Autonomy arises through a fairly rigid sexual division of labour, which excludes women from most agricultural work, and means that traditional women work independently of their husbands and not jointly or cooperatively with them (Lloyd 1974, 37-38). Although a woman traditionally expects her husband to provide her with capital to start trading or to establish her craft, she is her own supervisor. Income derived from her labour is her own - to spend on herself and her children, after fulfilling her obligations to share in purchasing food, clothing, and sundries.

I guess we could take it one paragraph at a time.  I am really trying to understand his culture and background.  this subordinate thing is sticking in my crowl.  Althou my cousin said to me last night that i am submissive when he comes around and a controling bitch after he leaves.
How submissive is he really expecting me to be?  is there any room for PMSing?  How will i know if i have pushed him too far?

sistawoman:


I guess we could take it one paragraph at a time. I am really trying to understand his culture and background. this subordinate thing is sticking in my crowl. Althou my cousin said to me last night that i am submissive when he comes around and a controling bitch after he leaves.
How submissive is he really expecting me to be? is there any room for PMSing? How will i know if i have pushed him too far?

This is not so much a cultural thing as it is a historic thing. Women have been subordinate to men in every part of the world for centuries. Times are changing, sweetheart. Please just be yourself and communicate well with your husband. Please don't try to mold yourself into some silly idea you have of what the traditional Yoruba woman is supposed be like!

buzyDiva:

@eldee,
u are on your own o
when u finish am, hit me up

LOL!!!
Grab you Webster let's solve this case na

yemivictor:

Na only God know who send u message!?

@busta
summarization. . . .Yoruba women are hardworking. . .some independently of their men. .

@poster

WAS THAT FOR YOUR FINAL YEAR PROJECT? or wat?

chei, i tried reading this but, its just too much!

@4her
thanks

hahahha hehehe. . tbk417, who told you that I read it? or did not read it?

makavele:

@poster

WAS THAT FOR YOUR FINAL YEAR PROJECT? or what?

no this is just something i came across while on the internet looking up specific information regarding his tribe.  Most information on the internet about Nigerian men & women relationships are generalized and I only get specific information when i look for tribal information.

I am just looking to understand what he expects from me.  I was pretty confident that I was what he needed until last night.  

i think my uneasyness is coming from last nights interaction with my neighbor.  so look at my other thread and maybe you will understand my need to understand everything about him.

sistawoman:

I am just looking to understand what he expects from me.

Have you asked him?

Buzydiva, we need to talk oh, i get correct jist for u, trust me - u go like this one
I'll holla @u soon sha

He expects loyalty, respect and for me to contuine as i have been.  I have noticed that he likes to be waited on, not hand and foot but he does like for me to do the simple things.  But is that all that he expects.  He says that he views me as a Nigerian, when I asked him why he said it is because of my personality, the way i raise my children and my ability to provide for my family.

I think it turns me on in a way to be submissive to him.  I am in so control of so many other things that submitting him is a turn on.  Even in my first marriage I was not submissive.  I have run my house and my life since I was 17 years old, now 33, so i am a little afraid that when we start living together after the marriage that he will see the controling side of me or maybe i am affraid that i will loose all control and submitt which may or may not be a good thing.

I wonder why U guys keep asking the right questions to the wrong people.


Ask ur husband what he expects of U. Simple!!! U would be suprised that what he expects of U is clearly different from what any other avergae Nigerian would. Even tho there is a trend that is common in most Nigerian men, U would be suprised how different each person would be.

I would give U an example. My dad's expectation of what my mom should do and not do was completely different from that of his brother's. They are both of the same tribe, same mom but they had different thought processes and intepretation.

Stop being jittery about ur husband's conversation with ur neigbour's husband and concentrate more in making ur marriage work.

Finally on an advisory note:
1) Always be urself

2) Do not think U can change him. U wont. Whatever u dont like of him now that U guys are dating , prepare to live with that. That way U can learn to accomodate his virtue and vices.

@Uche2nna

Thank You!!!

I'm sorry but your relationship with this man worries me.  It just has so many unhealthy elements to it.

This business of mixing papers with love is just so wrong.

I'm sorry, I just had to say it.

@lexy,

yeah?
wats up with dat?

@ amber

Ehhmm, who mentioned anything about papers here ?

@4her
where have u been joh?
i have gist jare. . .shey u'll buzz me

@tbk419
aiight. . .

4Her:

@tbk419
aiight. . .

Hmmmmmmmm, this gotta be good

Uche2nna:

Hmmmmmmmm, this gotta be good

what's got to be good na. .

amber_ella:

I'm sorry but your relationship with this man worries me.  It just has so many unhealthy elements to it.

This business of mixing papers with love is just so wrong.

I'm sorry, I just had to say it.  

I agree

I have one of two choices

1. turn this love i have for him off and just handle this like a business

2. allow myself to love him knowing full well that my heart maybe broken in 3 years when it is all said and done.

I choose to go with #2.  I love him and he professes his love to me.  In January we plan to go home so that his family, those that are left alive, can meet me.  If in 3 years he takes his papers and walks away i will have the memories and the heart break but i will not blame him or anyone else.

I refuse to live my life in the what if.  Living in the what if kept me in a marriage and another relationship far longer than I should have.  Being paralyzed by the thought of being hurt stopped me from opening up to someone before him.  He is good to me and even better to my children, his children love me and we fit well together.  If he just in it for the papers then it will be reviled in three years.  If not and he truly loves me then that too will be reviled but i believe in karma and i believe that she is a bitch.  If he is deceiving me and playing me then karma will kick him in the ass.

I am a very open, caring woman.  Who believes in doing unto others as you would expect them to do unto you.  Has this bitten me in the ass, yes it has, does it stop me from being open like i am, no.  Everyone around me knows that if i mess wit you and you need my last, as long as my kids don't need it, i will give it to you.  But if you cross me or put my children in harms way i will destroy you.  I can be your bestfriend or your worse enemy.

@ sistawoman

It seems I am missing something here Papers


@ 4Her

U tell me

Uche2nna:

@ sistawoman

It seems I am missing something here Papers

We first met as a business arrangment. After meeting and dating I started to fall for him and he for me.