Women, Marriage, Divorce and the Emerging Colonial State in Abeokuta (Nigeria) 1892-1904

Byfield, Judith A.

doi:10.2307/486039

Cited by 10 publications

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“…The coexistence of two audiorities that may be appealed to and manipulated creates a complex system translating ascribed status labels to specific rights. Byfield (1996) offers an interesting historical analysis of one instantiation of dual authorities, a case in which women in Abeokuta, Nigeria, appealed to British railway commissioners for a reinterpretation of their locally ascribed social status. These are not two separate systems, each acting independendy widi no cross-references (see van Donge 1993); in many instances the "statutory" authority may belong to the same household as the "customary" authority.…”

Section: Defining and Characterizing Rights And Incidence Of Access Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Gray

Kevane²

1999

African Studies Review

142

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Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change. While this situation may sound grim, the paper also explores how women have responded to reductions in access to land. They have mounted both legal and customary challenges to inheritance laws, made use of anonymous land markets, organized formal cooperative groups to gain tenure rights, and manipulated customary rules using woman-to-woman marriages and mother-son partnerships. These actions have caused women to create new routes of access to land and in some cases new rights.

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Section: Defining and Characterizing Rights And Incidence Of Access Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Gray

Kevane²

1999

African Studies Review

142

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“…Bride price, paid to the wife's parents, involved work, payment of crops, assistance with major expenses, and transfers of cash. Coercion and violence could be used to keep a women married (Byfield, 1996). Payment of bride price established claims over children.…”

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confidence: 99%

Does Land Abundance Explain African Institutions?

Fenske

2009

SSRN Journal

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“…The fact that the statutory law gave women the right to refuse a husband chosen by their family was significant. The newly created court system provided the option for women to leave undesirable marriages and for that decision to be enforceable by law (Wright 1982;Roberts 1990;Byfield 2001;Hawkins 2002). There is substantial evidence that during colonial times women resorted to colonial courts for protection against the discriminatory justice of traditional chiefs' courts in matters of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and forced marriage (Booth 1992;Jean-Baptiste 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Legal Origins and Female HIV

Anderson¹

2018

American Economic Review

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More than one-half of all people living with HIV are women and 80 percent of all HIV-positive women in the world live in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper demonstrates that the legal origins of these formerly colonized countries significantly determine current-day female HIV rates. In particular, female HIV rates are significantly higher in common law sub-Saharan African countries compared to civil law ones. This paper explains this relationship by focusing on differences in female property rights under the two codes of law. In sub-Saharan Africa, common law is associated with weaker female marital property laws. As a result, women in these common law countries have lower bargaining power within the household and are less able to negotiate safe sex practices and are thus more vulnerable to HIV, compared to their civil law counterparts. Exploiting the fact that some ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa cross country borders with different legal systems, we are able to include ethnicity fixed effects into a regression discontinuity approach. This allows us to control for a large set of cultural, geographical, and environmental factors that could be confounding the estimates. The results of this paper are consistent with gender inequality (the “feminization” of AIDS), explaining much of its prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. (JEL I12, J15, J16, K11, K15, O15, O17)

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Women, Marriage, Divorce and the Emerging Colonial State in Abeokuta (Nigeria) 1892-1904

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Does Land Abundance Explain African Institutions?

Legal Origins and Female HIV

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