"Women throughout West Africa have always had the right to protest,
individually or more powerfully in group, when they perceive
that men have acted in ways which show disrespect for women and
for women's role in society."
...
"And in neighboring Nigeria, Igbo women have long had an institution called "Sitting on a Man" where women collectively, in costumes again very much like the women I have described here in Nso, could corner a man who they thought had insulted women or who had beaten his wives in his house--or wherever they found him, and yell obscenities and threaten him physically until he recanted publicly and paid a fine."
...
"Within the context of a commodity economy, women have had to bear the largest burden of the economic crisis which has debilitated much of Africa. Becoming especially acute in Cameroon over the past decade where it has been exacerbated by structural adjustment programs attempting to curtail the overspending and corruption of its government in a number of ways, one of which has been a fifty percent devaluation of the CFA--a move which caused prices for most household essentials to triple within a few months.. During this time women's formerly inalienable rights to particular resources such as land have been increasingly threatened as commodification of land and of food crops has proceeded apace--with an increasing population and with the possibility of a civil service job shut off for most men--and with drastic salary cuts within the civil service, many men have taken over available farm land as commercial enterprises and many have been selling ancestral land to be able to maintain a middle class life style. The burden of women's responsibilities to earn a cash income to pay school fees, medical bills and other obligations formerly paid by men who no longer have access to any kind of work--essentially to fulfill what has always been women's role--to reproduce the household and underwrite the rural standard of living-- has grown almost exponentially."
Mitzi Goheen is a Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Amherst College.
http://www3.amherst.edu/~mrhunt/womencrossing/goheen.html
...
"And in neighboring Nigeria, Igbo women have long had an institution called "Sitting on a Man" where women collectively, in costumes again very much like the women I have described here in Nso, could corner a man who they thought had insulted women or who had beaten his wives in his house--or wherever they found him, and yell obscenities and threaten him physically until he recanted publicly and paid a fine."
...
"Within the context of a commodity economy, women have had to bear the largest burden of the economic crisis which has debilitated much of Africa. Becoming especially acute in Cameroon over the past decade where it has been exacerbated by structural adjustment programs attempting to curtail the overspending and corruption of its government in a number of ways, one of which has been a fifty percent devaluation of the CFA--a move which caused prices for most household essentials to triple within a few months.. During this time women's formerly inalienable rights to particular resources such as land have been increasingly threatened as commodification of land and of food crops has proceeded apace--with an increasing population and with the possibility of a civil service job shut off for most men--and with drastic salary cuts within the civil service, many men have taken over available farm land as commercial enterprises and many have been selling ancestral land to be able to maintain a middle class life style. The burden of women's responsibilities to earn a cash income to pay school fees, medical bills and other obligations formerly paid by men who no longer have access to any kind of work--essentially to fulfill what has always been women's role--to reproduce the household and underwrite the rural standard of living-- has grown almost exponentially."
Mitzi Goheen is a Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Amherst College.
http://www3.amherst.edu/~mrhunt/womencrossing/goheen.html
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