The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, with populations in Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana. Their long history of city-states and Islamic caliphates, their complex trading economies, and their cultural traditions have attracted the attention of historians, political economists, linguists, and anthropologists. The large body of scholarship on Hausa society, however, has assumed the subordination of women to men.
Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century refutes the notion that Hausa women are pawns in a patriarchal Muslim society. The contributors, all of whom have done...