The Destabilization of the Traditional Yoruba Sexual System

Ekiti Yoruba society in Nigeria is characterized like many African societies by high levels of polygyny necessitating a late age of male marriage and by a long duration of postpartum female sexual abstinence. Thus about three-quarters of postpubertal males have no current access to a wife for sexual activity in a society that does not enforce male continence. The contemporary solution is a high level of male premarital and extramarital sexuality which is partly dependent on the availability of commercial sex in urban areas later female marriage and significant numbers of divorced separated or widowed women who have not remarried. It has been claimed that traditional society was more restricted in each of these regards. Yet it appears probable that there was an even more constrained access to marital sexuality and no greater enforcement of male continence in the past. This investigation employs surveys anthropological study and historical reports to describe the traditional sexual system and to show when and why it changed. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)