Gender and Generational Conflict Under Colonial Rule

Overview of Logistics and Regional Context

• Class Logistics and Group Activity:
      * The session involves a precursor group discussion regarding themes of how gods operate in the unit's material.
      * Students are working toward a more specific discussion by Monday regarding whether relationships discussed are reconcilable.
      * The instructor notes the difficulty of engineering group systems in the specific classroom and jokingly offers compensation of a total of $1.00$ to be split among test subjects.
• Regional Market in Ondo State, Nigeria:
      * The lecture uses an image of a regional market in Ondo State today to illustrate the endurance of gendered power.
      * Observation of Market Space: The market is almost exclusively populated by women and children, particularly among the sellers and buyers.
      * Economic Power: Women control vital economic activity at both the household and community levels in this region.
      * Role of Men: Men are present only as support to the marketplace, rather than in control of it.
      * Literary Connection: The instructor notes that Pacheco (likely a reference to Achebe in the context of Arrow of God), despite his Nigerian heritage, missed many gendered aspects of colonialism because he was brought up in English schools as a privileged youngster.
      * Colonial Endurance: Women’s economic power persisted through the colonial era but faced challenges such as taxes and arbitrary charges by British-appointed authorities.

Quiz Review: Colonial Infrastructure and Urbanization

• Early Colonial Benefits:
      * Infrastructure (road and rail construction) in tropical or non-settler areas often benefited Africans by providing greater access to markets and potentially higher income.
      * Though funded by African labor and taxes, these projects allowed for increased economic reach.
• Critique of Urbanization:
      * There is an implied critique within certain texts that moving away from the village and tradition to cities is detrimental.
      * Migration Targets: Men in the migrant workforce are the primary subjects of this critique for abandoning traditional order.
• Gender Bias in Colonial Communication:
      * Colonial officials generally preferred to hear only from men.
      * Women’s voices were typically ignored unless backed by large numbers, threats of action, or actual unrest.

Gender, Generation, and Social Relations

• Defining Social Relations:
      * Gender and generation are key lenses for understanding culture and the reproduction of society through conflict.
      * Colonialism created enormous shifts in these relations through globalization, tribalization, and the balance of land and labor.
• European Intervention and Objective Morality:
      * Europeans often overrode African social accommodations based on their own sense of objective morality.
      * Missed Nuance: Colonial powers failed to understand dual systems of rule, such as in the Gold Coast Colony (referenced as Shambi), which had clear divisions of power based on gender and sex.
• Disparate Impacts of Empire:
      * The effects of empire were not evenly distributed; the form and shape of intervention differed for men, women, the old, and the young.
      * Work Spheres: Women in most societies had distinct spheres of work and avenues to status that were reshaped by colonial political and economic shifts.
      * Geographic Variation: Experiences varied based on Islamic vs. non-Islamic societies, the forest regions vs. cattle-keeping patriarchal societies, and locations North or South of the Sahara.

The Gendered Politics of Labor and the Body

• Labor Policies:
      * Imperial rule exerted power on a gendered basis, for instance, in mining labor.
      * Mining Examples: Europeans accepted men for deadly mining work because of an assumption that women could not mine, even in areas like the public plateau where women historically did the mining.
• Control focus: Colonialism focused on the labor, politics, and livelihoods of men, but sought control over the bodies of women.
• The Victorian Standard:
      * European colonists brought $19^{th}$-century ideas regarding where gender acts as an operative concept.
      * They judged African behaviors against a "sterile standard" that assumed women should exclusively raise children and stay in the home.
      * This standard rarely aligned with the reality of African women’s economic importance in production and trade.

Marriage and Sexual Propriety in Colonial Contexts

• Sexual Propriety: Colonial authorities were obsessed with sexual propriety and the control of bodies, which extended to the institution of marriage.
      * They attacked matriarchal divorce and fluid gender/sexuality.
      * They were particularly hostile toward polyandry (multiple husbands).
• The "Licentious" Categorization:
      * African women outside the Islamic world were often labeled immodest or sexually liberal.
      * They were placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy, similar to how "licentious" women were viewed in Europe in the late $1800s$.
      * Quote from Diane DeGeeter (Zambia): "To the British Victorians, African female sexuality was threatening the populace."

Questions & Discussion: The Paradox of Colonial Relationships

• Question: The student asks about a section in Arrow of God regarding British officers having mistresses (mentioning Mr. Wright) and how that fits into the framework of viewing African women as "licentious."
• Response:
      * There is a remarkable paradox where African women were seen as objects to be used and discarded.
      * Career Risk: If a European official attempted to maintain a respectable, long-term relationship with an African woman, it could destroy his career.
      * Blame Shifting: When caught, men often blamed the women, utilizing the ancient trope of blaming women for the conditions or "needs" of men.
      * Character Note: Mr. Wright is viewed as a problematic and brutal figure by other colonial officers because of these associations.

Social Engineering and the Nuclear Family

• Legal Struggles over Marriage:
      * Colonial authorities struggled to define marriage legally for colonial courts to handle inheritance, land rights, and financial support.
      * While they preferred to leave minor issues to "native courts," appeals often went to European magistrates.
• The Bride Wealth Dispute:
      * Europeans viewed bride wealth (dowries paid to the bride's family) as the purchase of a person and therefore a form of slavery.
      * Paradoxically, Europeans were still paying dowries in Europe during this same period.
• Promotion of the Nuclear Family:
      * Colonial powers promoted the ideal of the nuclear family to cut people off from larger networks of support, making individuals more dependent on mission or state systems.
      * Example: The Congolese Voice lifestyle magazine promoted images of a single-family home with one or two children as late as $1953$.
• Resistance from Older Women:
      * Established African women often fought against colonial attempts to ban bride wealth or arranged marriage because their own "soft power" and status within the social system were tied to those institutions.

Escape Valves: Migration and Missions

• Escape Valves: Younger generations, especially women, used colonial systems like the church and cities to escape rural patriarchy or the power of older women.
• Migration: In Southern Africa post-$1920$, many women migrated to cities to work as housekeepers for independence and income.
• Missionaries: Conversion offered a new faith and status outside the existing societal structure, allowing people to circumvent traditional authorities.
• Colonial Conflict: These "escape valves" created a conflict for colonial governments who had promised to support the authority and structure of African societies.

Legal Manipulations and Surveillance

• Bride Wealth Policy:
      * There was no uniform European policy on bride wealth, but it was often used as an excuse to intervene in local societies.
      * Laws might set a cap on wealth or demand it be paid in money rather than cattle to force people into the cash economy.
      * This acted as a form of state surveillance over African social relations, breaking down self-sufficiency.
• Property Reclassification:
      * In legal disputes over infidelity, European courts struggled with African laws that demanded payment (rather than imprisonment or moral condemnation).
      * To navigate this, officials sometimes reclassified married African women as "property" to make infidelity a property crime, while simultaneously claiming they were "protecting" women from African men.

Colonial Anxiety and the Kenya Case (FGM)

• The Practice of Excision:
      * Practiced by a minority, it became a focal point of conflict in the $1920s$, notably in Kenya.
      * It was used as a means of gender and generational control to prevent young women from becoming "licentious" in cities.
• Colonial "Middle Ground":
      * Colonial governments wobbled between banning the practice and placating senior authorities.
      * They attempted to "clinicalize" it by suggesting less invasive variations (like clitoridectomy) be performed in medical clinics.
• Modern Context:
      * The practice has been illegal in Kenya since $2011$, yet prevalence remains over $25\%$ in young women.
      * It has moved underground or been medicalized by illegal doctors, leading to deaths from infection and blood loss.

Resistance: The Igbo Women’s War ($1929$)

• The Conflict: Women in Nigeria (referenced as Yani Rua/Nwanyeruwa) rose up against British-appointed warrant chiefs who were imposing taxes and arbitrary charges.
• Tactics:
      * Women swarmed the homes of these chiefs and forcibly removed their caps of office.
      * The British responded with violence, including machine-gunning women.
• Outcome: The disruption to economic activity across three or four cities was so great that the British were forced to negotiate and remove the unpopular chiefs.
• Legacy: These women successfully maintained their market power into the modern era.

Conclusion: Reactionary Patriarchy and Identity

• Reactionary Patriarchy: Colonial rule effectively created a reactionary patriarchy and a gerontocracy (rule by old men).
• Identity Crisis: The imposition of Europeanized Christian ideals regarding divorce and sexuality caused lasting social damage and identity crises in societies that were previously more flexible.
• Scholarly Reference: Mark Eberich’s book Heterosexual Africa discusses how colonial expectations of binary sexuality and gender were internalized by some African societies even as Europeans later moved away from those same standards.