Dispelling the myth of pre-colonial gender equality in Yoruba culture

Abstract

Controversy over the existence of a gender order among the pre-colonial Yoruba in south-western Nigeria is growing within postcolonial scholarship, including among Western academics. This article argues that Nathaniel Fadipe's ethnographic study, which references the pre-colonial era, sheds light on the debate. Fadipe was the first Yoruba sociologist to gain a Ph.D. Focusing on his discussions of childhood, the domestic sphere and family life, I undertake a textual analysis that compares his unpublished dissertation (1939) with the published version that was edited by Okediji and Okediji (1970). I conclude that both texts present clear evidence of pre-colonial gender constructs. The dissertation, less referenced by scholars, is however more persistent in discussing inequalities. I discuss the portrayal of gender, offer reasons for differences between the two texts and highlight areas of divergence.

Une controverse concernant l'existence d'un ordre basé sur le genre parmi les Yorubas précoloniaux du sud-ouest du Nigéria s'intensifie actuellement dans les écrits d'érudits postcoloniaux, y compris parmi les universitaires occidentaux. Cet article soutient que l'étude ethnographique de Nathaniel Fadipe, qui fait référence à l'ère précoloniale, fait la lumière sur le débat. Fadipe a été le premier sociologue yoruba à obtenir un doctorat. En me concentrant sur ses discussions sur l'enfance, le domaine domestique et la vie familiale, j'entreprends une analyse de texte qui compare sa thèse non publiée (1939) à la version publiée éditée par Okediji et Okediji (1970). Je conclus que les deux textes présentent des preuves claires de l'existence de constructions du genre précoloniales. La thèse, à laquelle les experts se réfèrent moins, est toutefois plus tenace dans sa discussion des inégalités. Je traite de la manière dont le genre est présenté, propose des raisons qui expliquent les différences entre les deux textes, et met en relief les domaines de divergence.

Keywords::

• Yoruba
• pre-colonial
• re-presenting
• life cycle
• childhood

Acknowledgements

I thank Emmanuel Babatunde for insisting that I must go beyond the early reading of Fadipe's book to review the original dissertation. I also thank Musa Ilu, Jay Gubrium and Diane Rodgers for their comments on earlier versions of this article, and the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

^1. A Google search revealed that between 1940 and 1970 ten publications cited the dissertation. After that, the book became the main reference. For example, over 90% of publications between 1971 and 1990 used the book.

^2. The following incident, which occurred during the colonial period, shows the impact of local gender constructs. A father threatened to “disown” the children of a former wife by announcing it in a national newspaper. Kin reminded him that one of the children was “onile” and they would not allow him to do it. While both Western and local ideas surface in this incident, the indigenous gender logic (onile/alejo) put forward by family elders prevailed, and the group of children (including females) were protected.

^3. While there are instances of non-gendered speech in Yoruba, there are also many examples of gendered language such as personal names like Oluwaju, Akintola, Adebayo and Gbolahan (male) or Yeside, Atinuke, Adenike and Agbeke (female), as well as gendered practices signified by language, as described here by the Okedijis.

^4. The Yoruba understood general gender references. Ako/Abo, for instance, refers to male/female creatures (animals and people), as in cock/hen, or male person/female person. In everyday life, there were symbolic traits that characterized the difference. Under prescribed/exceptional situations (e.g., iya oko, or male initiates who were “wives” to deities) individuals acted otherwise, but this did not alter the fact that children understood the gendered aspects of their lives. Similarly, allowances were made in nineteenth-century America: “a moody tomboyish girl” could act like a male until the age of marriage, after which she must acquire the expected womanly traits (Schnog 2009, 191–209).

^5. The Ifa system is believed to have spread when a priest, Orunmila, later deified, reformed one existing divinatory system and elevated Ifa above competing systems. This occurred during a period of extensive growth in agriculture, the invention of urbanization and hereditary monarchy. The Ifa corpus has continued to evolve but most of it is accepted as a body of pre-colonial narratives. Osun came into being in the pre-colonial era.

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Notes on contributors

Tola Olu Pearce

Tola Olu Pearce, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. Her research interests include gender, social inequalities, health, human rights and globalization. Her region of study is Africa.