Women traders of Ondo can teach the West

Press, 17 December 1986, Page 21

Women traders of Ondo can teach the West

By

MERCER CROSS, National

Geographic News Service

The economically independent women of Ondo, Nigeria, might have a thing or two to say to Western women who are striving for economic parity. In a tradition dating from the accession of a woman king 600 or 700 years ago, the Yoruba women have been guardians of their own pocketbooks. In Ondo, a trade centre in south-western Nigeria, the women are traders and the men are farmers. Husbands and wives never pool their resources. The women traditionally have had cash, while the men have had to barter with produce. Custom dictates how their separate incomes are allocated for household and family expenses. Often the wife is considerably wealthier than her husband. "Even between husband and wife, it’s all bargaining,” says Elizabeth Anne Eames, a candidate for a doctorate in anthropology at Harvard University. Her dissertation is on the women of Ondo. She has lived among them for 2>/ 2 years, with support from the National Geographic Society.

It all began between A.D. 1400 and 1500, after twins had been born to the king of Ife, Nigeria, the centre of the Yoruba world. In those days twins, considered abnormal, were killed. To save his, the king sent them away. The female twin, Pupupu, later founded Ondo; her twin brother founded a nearby town. Initially, Pupupu ruled Ondo alone, but before long she was forced to share her throne with a

man. Versions differ, according to sex, on how this came about. The male chiefs contend that in the middle of a council session with her chiefs, Pupupu stood up and said it was getting late and she had to tend to her chickens. But the female chiefs assert, according to Ms Eames, that Pupupu simply became old,, "so old that hair was growing out of her ears, and it got so she couldn’t hear anything,” and so her chiefs begged her to step down.

Regardless of either account’s accuracy, a new heirarchy was established, and it continues to this day. Ondo has both a male and a female king, both descendants of Pupupu. (In Yoruba terminology, the ruler is a king, regardless of sex.) There are two 18-member cabinets, one all men and the other all women.

The woman king and her cabinet have jurisdiction over all economic matters, including the town market, and over all disputes involving women. The man king and his cabinet have more political strength, because they are part of the governmental structure of the Nigerian State. In what Ms Eames sees as a vestige of British colonial rule — Nigeria became independent in 1960 — men cabinet members, or senior chiefs, receive a salary. Women chiefs don’t.

That isn’t the only inequality. Old ways are beginning to atrophy, Ms Eames says, and “the women’s roles are becoming less clear, less important.” In a shift that began after the Second World War, money has poured into Nigeria from other parts of the world, especially into the country’s bustling oil industry. Ondo’s male chiefs have assumed increasingly important roles in the big international deals, while the women have been relegated to their traditional position as traders and shopkeepers. “Now I can see the separate budget idea working to the detriment of the women in the sense that 'a lot of men have more money,” Ms Eames says. Still, the women chiefs of Ondo control much of the town’s wealth. Each November, they and their followers celebrate the Odun Aje festival, dedicated to Aje, the Yoruba god of wealth and profit.

Ms Eames was in Ondo last November for the one-day festival. A week after it ended, she was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of a 10-day strike by the town’s women. The strike was ignited by the State's imposition of an annual tax of about $4OO on the women, about the equivalent of a year’s tuition for two schoolchildren.

Enraged, the women chiefs

informed the governor that they refused to pay. They closed the market and marched forth in orderly ranks. Then they broke into a riot and ran screaming through the town. “It was mayhem,” Ms Eames says.

Some of the women penetrated forbidden parts of the male king’s palace, where they stripped off their clothes and cursed him. “Apparently a naked woman's curse is the worst thing that could ever happen to somebody,” Ms Eames says. “It’s like sure death.”

The king, still quite alive, reportedly retaliated by going to the market and making a sacrifice that would have the effect of killing anyone who came there. The women chiefs vowed never to go there again. Finally, the third-in-command chief, an honourable and respected man, called a meeting of the women in the town soccer stadium and negotiated a settlement: only women who owned cement buildings — the relatively well-ojf ones — would pay the new tax. Thus was calm restored to Ondo.

Within individual households, Ms Eames says, disputes between husbands and wives usually are not touched off by money matters. They are more likely to arise over jealousy between wives. The Yoruba are' polygamous, so men may have several wives. "It’s very important to have a diplomatic husband,” Ms Eames says.