Women in Africa

In the reading that I did last night,(604-605), Women were treated differently in certain time periods, and in certain regions of the world. For example before colonization, women had few work hours, because the families only did enough work to provide for their own families, but after, it all changed. As colonization took place, men started to plant a bunch of the cash crops such as cotton so they could trade, and market them, so the women were left with a huge plantation to work on. Hours for women changed from being forty six hours per week to being more than seventy. Men then started to move to different cities that were sometimes extremely far away just to seek money, so women then had full responsibility of the households. Of course women didn't want this and so they just stopped seeking husbands, and just turned to their families of birth. Women didn't always have it too bad. An example of this was that women in northern Nigeria started to get involved in small-scale trade and marketing, and they gained enough wealth to support even their husbands. Instead of the women asking the men for money, the men were now asking the women. Ultimately, in most parts of Africa women were treated unfairly.

According to the nineteenth-century chart, found in page 564 of Ways of the World, which depicts the “Progressive Development of Man”, identity is based on race. This chart shows nothing concerning women, so I don't think that western ideas played a huge role in the way women were treated in Africa. I believe that the own people of Africa created the situation they were in themselves because of the urge to get wealthy.