Throughout African history, agricultural labor was traditionally performed by women. Women were valuable to a community’s survival because they performed the essential farm work duties in hoe farming societies. While women carried out most of the farming work, men were primarily responsible for clearing new land to be farmed. Additionally, men performed duties such as serving in wars, governance, and judicial matters.
However, with the introduction of colonialism in Africa, the labor balance began to shift. Men were now expected to perform all agricultural duties while women were responsible for all household duties. While women were still doing a great deal of work, they were no longer compensated for it because the work was largely domestic and just seen as women’s duty, not work that deserved compensation. As such, gender roles in Africa changed forever as a result of colonialism.
[TRANSITION] In Joys of Motherhood, the change in expectations for women is made clear throughout the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Agabadi, Nnu Ego’s father, describes that he likes women who are able to “match his arrogance, his biting sarcasm, his painful jokes.” Agabadi does not respect women who are quiet and submissive, but instead likes women who are independent and BLANK. Agabadi’s view of women represents the ideal for women in precolonial times- women who were vocal, independent, and proud. This is clearly not the same ideal in Lagos, where women are greater influenced by Christianity and expected to conform to the standard of being quiet and submissive.
The consequences of this shift were enormous both economically and culturally, as can be seen in The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. In The Joys of Motherhood, THESIS
In The Joys of Motherhood, the main character, Nnu Ego, struggles because she is facing expectations both from her traditional culture (Ibo and Ibuza) yet she also has to find a way to survive in a world that has been changed by colonialism. In Lagos, Nnu Ego is restricted from the sources of money making that she would have been allowed in pre-colonial times. Although Nnu Ego partakes in petty trading, this is not enough to sustain her hungry and struggling family, and Nnu Ego remains dependent on her husband’s income. This is very different from Ibuza, where Nnu Ego would have been able to do agricultural work in order to feed her family. Emecheta highlights the differences between Lagos and Ibuza throughout the book, and by doing so, she denounces colonialism’s effect on the economies of African cities. For example, Nnu Ego says, “Were they not in a white man’s world where it was the duty of the father to provide for his family? In Ibuza, women made a contribution, but in urban Lagos, men had to be the sole providers.” Nnu Ego is trapped in Lagos- she is trying to fulfill her traditional role as a wife and mother, however because she is discouraged from generating income, she has no money to sustain her children who made her a real woman. Emecheta uses this a sharp critique of colonialism’s effects on gender roles in Africa
Because men were now the sole earners in a household, sons became more valuable than daughters, which perpetuates the cycle of gender roles and inequality. For example, when Nnu Ego’s fellow wife, Adaku, gives birth to a daughter and Nnu Ego gives birth to another son, Adaku is disappointed and feels as though she has let her husband down.
Additionally, Emecheta denounces the poverty that colonialism contributes to. In Ibuza, it would be unlikely that Nnu Ego and her family would go hungry, because they would be sustained by their crops. Howveer, in the new capitalist economy of Lagos, a family’s survival is completely dependent on whether or not the head of the household has a job. For example, when Nnaife is working, Nnu Ego is able to buy new clothing and send her children to school, but when Nnaife stays home, Nnu Ego doesn’t even have enough money to feed her children. By using stark images of poverty, Emecheta criticizes the effects of capitalism on a society that was previously dependent on agriculture.