to hold husbands in debt, control children’s labor,
and advise and influence male leaders. Images of
Hausa women as agents illustrate how they are
socially, economically, politically, and culturally
active within and despite the domesticity that dom-
inates their lives. These Muslim women are in con-
trol of their own lives, their children, and the
economic and other affairs of their households.
Such women are seen to have strong networks
within and beyond the domestic realm and to be
powerful, active traders, courtesans, Bori adepts,
and so on. Some argue that because Hausa women
subvert the restrictions of domesticity they are not
victims. For example, while women may not be
able to choose to reject seclusion, they can and do
manipulate its conditions, constantly devising ways
to exploit and work around restrictions of occupy-
ing and being occupied by the domestic.
Despite their limited spatial mobility and physi-
cal restriction to the domestic space of the court-
yard and home (gida), secluded Muslim Hausa
wives have an impact (albeit indirect) on external
political affairs through influencing their husbands
and the upbringing of their children. This is espe-
cially true for the elite, most domesticated, and
tightly secluded of all Hausa women – the royal
wives in the Kano Palace. A tiny minority of highly
educated Hausa women scholars and poets (mostly
from the past, but some today) are similarly por-
trayed as influential in political and social matters,
albeit from within their domestic roles as model
wives and mothers.
The discourse that emphasizes women’s agency
sees Hausa women occupying domestic women’s
worlds that are portrayed as sites of strength and
separateness, reflecting feminine value systems.
This is a valorization of the domestic, private sphere
in which men are not welcomed and from which
they remain largely absent. It is a domesticity within
which women are viewed as culturally autonomous,
active agents (rather than passive victims) who wield
the potential for subverting established male power.
Thus, although appearing thoroughly domesticated,
Muslim women in Northern Nigeria resist domes-
tication through covert or indirect bargaining
(albeit not in overt organized ways), in face-to-face
relations with husbands, children, co-wives, other
kin, friends, and neighbors with such strategies as
diversion of food, income, or labor resources.
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——, Baba of Karo [in Hausa], Kano 1991.Elsbeth RobsonTurkeyAfter the foundation of the republic in 1923,
Turkey went through an immense and profound
process of modernization, which in the Turkish
case meant the adoption of Western social, cultural,
and economic structures and the abolition of tradi-
tional institutions. As part of this grand project, the
Kemalist reforms were initiated, which radically
affected the status of women. Such reforms in-
cluded the introduction of a secular Civil Code that
banned polygamy and granted women enhanced
property rights. Although women had property
rights in the Ottoman Empire, the scope and the use
of such rights remained very limited and covered
only upper-class and educated women. With the
reforms, however, the scope of property rights
expanded to a universal scale. In addition, all free