"The Status of Women" in Indigenous African Societies

From my own readings on Africa and my research among Yoruba in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, it appears that except for highly Islamized societies in Sub-Saharan Africa, in this part of world more than any other, in precolonial times women were conspicuous in high places. They were queenmothers; queen-sisters; princesses, chiefs, and holders of other offices in towns and villages; occasional warriors; and, in one well known case, that of Lovedu, supreme monarch. Furthermore, it was almost invariably case that African women were conspicuous in economic life of their societies, being involved in farming, trade, or craft production. The purviews of female and male in African societies were often described as separate and complementary.2 Yet, whenever most writers compared the lot of women and men in Africa, they ascribed to men a better situation, a higher status. Women were depicted as saddled with home and domesticity; men were portrayed as enjoying exhilaration of life in outside world. For me, pieces of protrait did not ring true. Not only was there an obvious distortion of ethnographic reality-women