Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society

by Ifi Amadiume

Challenging the received orthodoxies of social anthropology, Ifi Amadiume argues that in precolonial society, sex and gender did not necessarily coincide. Examining the structures that enabled women to achieve power, she shows that roles were neither rigidly masculinized nor feminized.

Economic changes in colonial times undermined women’s status and reduced their political role and Dr Amadiume maintains, patriarchal tendencies introduced by colonialism persist today, to the detriment of women.Critical of the chauvinist stereotypes established by colonial anthropology, the author stresses the importance of recognizing women’s economic activities as as essential basis of their power. She is also critical of those western feminists who, when relating to African women, tend to accept the same outmoded projections.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gender, Anthropology, History, Africa, Feminism, Queer

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1987

About the author

Dr. Ifi Amadiume (born 23 April 1947) is a Nigerian poet, anthropologist and essayist. She joined the Religion Department of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, U.S. in 1993.

Born in Kaduna to Igbo parents, Amadiume was educated in Nigeria before moving to Britain in 1971. She studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, gaining a BA (1978) and PhD (1983) in social anthropology. Her fieldwork in Africa resulted in two ethnographic monographs relating to the Igbo - African Matriarchal Foundations (1987), and the award-winning Male Daughters Female Husbands (Zed Press, 1987). A book of theoretical essays, Reinventing Africa, appeared in 1998.

She is on the advisory board of the Centre for Democracy and Development, a non-governmental organisation that aims to promote the values of democracy, peace and human rights in Africa, particularly in the West African sub-region.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Cameron Sant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought Male Daughters, Female Husbands on the title alone, expecting it to be an anthropological study discussing how an indigenous society had made space and roles for queer people.

I was very wrong. Instead, Ifi Amadiune presents a brilliant study of how the Nnobi of Nigeria made space and roles for women, and how the Christian patriarchy took those roles away. Amadiune challenges her fellow anthropologists and western feminists about their assumptions about African societies. (Namely, that colonialism helped African women get out from under the thumb of bad African men, yet they still need western feminists to save them further. Amadiune clearly demonstrates how neither of these things are true and how these kinds of simplified views of any indigenous society are steeped in racism.)

This book is simultaneously scholarly and readable (a feat for scholarship! I'm looking at you, Judith Butler) and occasionally even funny. 28 years after its publication, even though some of the local political events detailed are now long in the past, the big issues aren't dated at all, and Amadiune's big ideas about colonialism, feminism, racism, and religion are still (tragically) relevant for the world at large.

The book's only detriment is there's one type of women Amadiune isn't really interested in advocating for: lesbian/bisexual/queer women. In the introduction, Amadiune derides lesbian western black women (namely, the great Audre Lorde) for looking to women-to-women marriages in Nnobi and elsewhere in Igboland as sources of lesbian history. Though Amadiune is sympathetic with their search for their African roots, she argues that these marriages aren't LBQ, and are the result of a complex social system which these western women are imposing their identities on.

This is legitimate, and something western LGBTQ people need to learn to pipe down about. We love to point to indigenous societies and point at the Christian church and say "Hey, look, these people would have accepted us, you ruined everything!" However, when we make these arguments, all we're doing is making assumptions about societies we don't understand in order to prove our points to other western people, which is straight-up cultural appropriation. (If I hear one more argument about the ancient Greeks being great and accepting, I swear--those people hated all women and their only accepted model of queerness was pedophilic men. Calm down people.)

However, in this quote, Amadiune's dismissive tone implies that queer women do not exist in Nnobi at all. (She finds ideas like Lorde's "shocking and offensive to Nnobi women" "there is a limit to how far facts can be bent or our own wishes and fantasies imposed") I've seen these quotes extrapolated by internet commenters to argue that queer people do not exist in the entirety of Africa, which I find alarming.
(Queer women come up directly once more in the book: A woman, whose female husband is dead, drunkenly jokes that she isn't getting any, and another woman jokes that she will satisfy her later. Amadiune witnessed this conversation and presents it neutrally, though the details about the joking and the drinking make me wonder.)

There is so much here that Amadiune is saying that is really important that I don't want people to strike down the book based on a paragraph in the preface. This book was written in 1987, when it was still in vogue to loudly hate queers (at least) in the western world. I hope that in the 28 years since, Amadiune has come around and become an ally.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my Anthropology of Gender class. This is an incredibly thorough ethnography that traces the history, colonisation, and modern traditions of a small area in Nigeria. Amadiume doesn’t just reclaim, explain, and evaluate the customs of the Igbo people from the town where she was born, she also demonstrates the long history of how colonialism has distorted, misconstrued, and tried to erase them.

It makes me wonder how many indigenous religions we’ve completely lost due to the efforts of colonisation trying to either mould them to the “White Christian ideal” or wipe them out completely. It’s a sad thought, but I’m still glad Ifi Amadiume is here to speak for herself, taking back the fierce power of anthropology from those who would use it for ill.

[Chino · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books where you literally need to have discussions with other (like minded) people (well at least for me). You need to be actively decolonizing your mind and desist from using the western lens when reading this book. I love that she presents the facts and its up to the reader to decide what they want to do with it or how to proceed further, and even better, the facts she presents are thought provoking. I also appreciate the fact that she has a list of questions or prompts where further research can be done on this subject. The part that made my heart really happy was when she started talking about what really needs to happen in the then modern day Nigerian society. I couldn't help but notice that her solutions/advice were in line with Sankara's speech/book on "Women's Liberation and the African freedom struggle", this made me so glad.

"In my opinion, any organization truly committed to the achievement of economic and social justice for women must be guided by a socialist ideology".

[Clivemichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense study, academically focused and illustrated with the author's numerous personal observations and editorial reflections of previous similar studies. Well described review of the deterioration of female authority within Nigerian Igbo culture.

[Evie]

An incredibly detailed sociological account of women across the history of Nnobi in Nigeria, which centres Nnobi oral history and explicitly rejects contemporaneous ethnocentric anthropological studies of African peoples and places. Beyond this, ‘Male Daughters, Female Husbands’ has since been received as an important work of (proto-)queer theory for its evidencing of an explicit decoupling of gender from sex, whereby women could ritually become men to assume masculine roles in society, and the historic institution of woman-woman marriage.

However, Amadiume herself explicitly rejects the tendency for (especially diaspora African) lesbians to read these marriages as potentially lesbian arrangements, spaces wherein existing lesbian desires could be legitimately and legally expressed. Certainly, there are arguments to be made against this reading, but Amadiume rejects this reading with such dismissiveness and vitriol that this may, in fact, be the only deliberately homophobic work of queer theory ever written. This disagreement could have led Amadiume into a necessary exploration of the actual nature and definition of marriage in Nnobi society. For example, Amadiume demonstrates that women took wives to increase their labour power in working the land and that linguistically the practice of a woman taking a wife was the same as a master taking a servant, such that ‘marriage’ was a non-sexual, non-exclusive contract, which resulted in rights of inheritance for the children of the wives, but seems otherwise indistinguishable from a servile relationship.

While others have reduced Amadiume’s criticism to its throwaway line in the original preface, her accusation of lesbians using Nnobi history to justify their political aims in the field of marriage equality as nothing more than arrogance is, ironically, a charge that could equally be levelled at Amadiume herself and her presentation of Nnobi as ‘originally’ a matriarchy. This assertion comes apropos of nothing, since Amadiume spends every chapter giving examples of men’s ultimate political and economic power over women and her only example of a genuinely matrilineal and matrifocal society comes from places other than Nnobi, a conflation of African peoples of the type that Amadiume herself criticises others for doing.

In her quest to distance herself from both Western feminists and African men, Amadiume draws questionable and bizarre sociological conclusions from robust historical facts. In one instance, she claims that sexuality was not an issue for African women, but then describes clitoridectomy as a known point of contention for Nnobi women, which surely counts as an issue of sexuality! On a more structural level, Amadiume, despite being an avowed socialist herself, dismisses the notion of a class system in pre-colonial Nnobi, despite detailing the political power of Nnobi as concentrated in political positions either inherited or bestowed by economic success. Never once does Amadiume consider that the last resort possibility of allowing a daughter to inherit has as much to do with reinforcing the existing wealth and status of certain families as any feminist impetus, which is probably why wives were seen as subordinate to the blood relation of daughters.

There are genuinely interesting feminist conclusions to be drawn from the exploration of a patriarchy which absorbed the potential for gender fluidity and allowed a few women the power of political veto and which worshipped a Idemili, a goddess, as its key deity. In fact, many of Amadiume’s examples of matrifocality find corollaries in Western patriarchies from the goddess Idemili, which recalls the Virgin Mary, and the name Nnobi deriving from the mother of Obi, which recalls many Europeans referring to their countries as the motherland, to even the (limited) political power of women, which reminds us of the fact that women can hold the highest political offices in a country that is still patriarchal, such as the UK during the 1980s, when Amadiume researched and published this book, during which both the monarch and the prime minister were women. At best, Amadiume gives evidence of a slightly mitigated patriarchy, rather than a matriarchy or even a dual-sex system.

Furthermore, while Amadiume does not mention trans people explicitly, her writing belies a belief in gender essentialism, demonstrated through her repeated belief that women are inherently more peaceful than men. Admittedly, this belief is shared by some of the Nnobi women as well, but Amadiume takes it further to claim, for example, that the belief in Idemili promoted peace, right after saying that you could be executed for killing a python, the animal most associated with her. Additionally, she claims the segregation of women from men in the domestic space as one favourable to women, which reinforces a particularly reductive view of both women and men. Even the apparent gender fluidity of male daughters and female husbands only really serves as an example of the exception which proves the rule, and one which can hardly be seen as feminist in its necessitating of women becoming men for the purpose of inheritance.

Frustratingly, there are areas where Amadiume genuinely excels, particularly in her rejection of previous ethnocentric scholarship and in her exploration of the further marginalisation of women during the colonial era, but her prejudice, ironically, leads her to unjustifiable proclamations.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention that ‘Male Daughters, Female Husbands’ is not a static text for Amadiume, who has written further scholarship on the subject and a new preface in 2014, which makes some concession to her LGBT critics and suggests, though never outright states, that the homophobia in contemporary Nigeria might stem from residual colonial thought. But, in and of itself, this text is exasperating, and largely a waste of Amadiume’s clear diligence and admirable feminist/socialist political goals.

[Aidan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a great time with this read, I took my time.
It is a fascinating look into the social and political in situations of the Nnobi people in Nigeria. My favorite chapter was that covering the Politics of motherhood starting page 69, that analysis stuck out to me the most as being particularly rich!
Some very dated language tbh.

So much fascinating work on the social institutional flexibility that is available in this world! Still worthy of challenging and critique, but fascinating compared to where we are now.

[Kassandra S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly dry and academic book. You can tell that almost immediately, but even as I was enjoying the content I still was struggling and couldn’t wait to finish it.

I learned a lot and the book. Mostly delivers what is promised. From the title I expected more queer commentary or observations. But the book, on the context it was written, is looking at one case study and written within the context of women’s rights questions in Nigeria in (broadly) the 1980s.

[Eurethius Péllitièr · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and informative read. While the book is written like a research paper it reveals raw distinctions between gender perceptions that are alternatives to biological essentialism

[Anekwe Obinna U · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very very informative

[Blessing John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply phenomenal.

[Lulu Cao · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Amadiume provides vivid details on how myths, ecology, and division of labor have created a flexible gender system in the traditional Nnobi society in Nigeria. One manifestation of the flexibility of this gender system is in the special roles of male daughters and female husbands. In Nnobi, women don't have the right to own the land and only male descendants can inherit the land from previous generations. But in some rare cases, daughters can inherit the land in the absence of a son. As this position is deemed to belong to men, these daughters are given full male status and called male daughters. Thus, there is a possibility for females to play males' roles. Female husbands refer to a male's wife, who has bought another woman as her wife. In Chapter 2, Amadiume talks about the possibility of woman-to-woman marriage thanks to the flexibility of the Knobi gender system. A female from another town came to a Knobi wife. The Knobi wife might find a male husband for this female but adopt the role of her mother and claim her service, or let her stay and work directly as her wife. In the latter case, the Knobi wife becomes her female husband. Amadiume distinguishes this practice from lesbianism (see Preface; many people criticize Amadiume for holding an adversarial attitude towards lesbians based on her remark here). The Knobi wife's purchase of another wife, according to Amadiume, is like purchasing a slave or a worker (CH2). These two manifestations, in my view, can be put in doubt. As Amadiume says, male daughters only happen in rare cases. It is not clear that the gender system can be said to be "flexible" due to some exceptional cases. Similarly with female husbands. As the commonality of these roles is unaddressed, more evidence is needed to prove the "flexibility". As this book is titled Male Daughters, Female Husbands, I thought these two roles would be the main justifications.

Amadiume does provide other evidence. In a Nnobi family, she says, wives have access to land (though not ownership). Wives grow different kinds of food, market and sell them, and keep their profits. Some wives become much more wealthy and powerful than their husbands and their husbands are referred to as their husbands, rather than being referred to in their own names. However, the thread still seems to be patriarchal, as wives have to rely on their male husbands to access the land. Males have to be their original source of wealth and power.

In Chapter 13, Amadiume concludes that Nnobi is a matriarchal society that is connected with motherliness and love. My friends comment that, however, previous chapters have addressed this point far from enough for Amadiume to conclude this point.

In this book, Amadiume makes contributions in revising feminism. For example, she criticizes the basic assumption under white feminism that claims that society becomes gendered due to different functionality that men and women perform with regard to reproduction. According to that view, women are occupied with child-rearing and become subordinated to men who are responsible for subsistence. Amadiume argues instead that in Africa, women contribute more in subsistence and gain power by their household management. In the traditional Nnobi society in Africa, there is a dual-sex political system where both women and men have political power. But colonialism breaks the balance, bringing a rigid gender ideology. Thereby local men successfully marginalized women in politics.

Amadiume suggests that there should be equal numbers of women and men in Nnobi political institutions (CH13). Without knowing the proportion of different genders and other specifics, I would not evaluate whether this suggestion for a straightforward divide is justified. My friend also comments that many factors play a role in deciding the representatives' number. Female identity does not make a woman fight for women's interests. Some women might care about transgender issues, while others might defend males' interests. But an equal number could be a good starting point.

Amadiume suggests that women outside this area should not intervene with local reforms unless invited. Both of these suggestions look dictatorial. But Amadiume does provide some reasons for readers to believe that she can provide an objective account while being a Nnobi daughter (see note 1 in CH1). I do think outsiders should pay their respect to Amadiume's work and advice, given how invasive previous scholars are in studying African society. Besides, Amadiume is a socialist and she advocates for a socialist society in Nnobi. This might be an interesting point for me to come back to in the future.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the Igbo-born ethnographer Ifi Amadiume’s Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society was published in 1987, the monograph was one of the first ethnographic studies of African women by an African woman (Amadiume ix). Amadiume was critiquing ‘Western’ feminist writers of the 1980s who felt that women in the Global South could be collapsed into one universal group of oppression by patriarchal forces. These writers also assumed that women in the Global South lacked universal political authority (Amadiume 4-5). Amadiume did her research in the Igbo village of Nnobi in present day Nigeria (Amadiume 17). Nnobi also happens to be her hometown (Amadiume ix). One is the idea of male daughters; this is when a man who does not have sons to inherit most of the land allows his first daughter to inherit most of his land. The male-daughters then get all the privileges in terms of political, social, and religious status that landownership gives a person in Nnobi society (Amadiume 32). The pre-Christian Nnobi village practiced ancestral worship so that the senior member of the family unit who inherited the most land had religious duties and status. Therefore ‘male daughters’ had religious status within the community (Amadiume 32). Amadiume argues that in pre-Colonial pre-Christian Igbo society, the relationship between men and women was complementary in a way that did not signify discrimination or oppression to women (Oyowe & Yurkivska 95). Amadiume wariness around topic of lesbianism in 1987 dates the monograph, Male Daughters, Female Husbands but the monograph remains an influential and noteworthy ethnographic study (Amadiume 7).
Work Cited:
Oyowe, Oritsegbubemi A. & Yurkivska, Olga. “Can a communitarian concept of African personhood be both relational and gender-neutral?” School of South African Philosophy 33, no. 1: 85-99.

[Patrick Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I opened this book intending to skim through it so that I could write an essay, but I was honestly captivated. Super interesting and well-written to the point that it tricked a very lazy student into reading the whole thing.

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love being forced to read ethnographies for religion classes.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating & saddening - though very technically written

[Denilson Santos]

Muito importante para minha pesquisa