PROFILE

Nigeria's Muslim Women

Muslim women in Nigeria are carving out a role for themselves in public life, but their political leaders are ostracized by much of society.

omen's groups in the Muslim regions of northern Nigeria have successfully carved out new roles for themselves in the public sphere. Yet when individual women assume leadership positions in civic organizations or in politics, their husbands almost invariably divorce them and they are called interchangeably bazawara, which means widow or divorcee, and karuwai, which means prostitute or profligate, says Gwendolyn Mikell (left), a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of peace in 1995-96. Nevertheless, in the face of such rejection and in increasing numbers, Muslim women continue to stake a claim in shaping their country's future.

Mikell, an anthropologist at Georgetown University and a former president of the African Studies Association, has studied women and peacebuilding in Africa for five years. She recently visited the cities of Kano, Zaria, and Kaduna in northern Nigeria as part of her fellowship project to see how women in the heart of Muslim culture and politics are creating new roles for themselves in the public life of their societies--especially in terms of democracy-building and peacebuilding. The research is part of Mikell's comparative study of African women's peacebuilding activities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria.

Private vs. Public Spheres

The Muslim culture of northern Nigeria--comprising roughly half of that country's 88.5 million population--has in the past relegated women to the private sphere. Although women have been allowed to form their own organizations, these groups limited their activities to domestic, familial, and community issues. It's fair to say, Mikell notes, that even today, many Muslim women's groups in the north would voice the popular sentiment that good Muslim women do not operate in the public context and that they are secluded and veiled.

However, Muslim women's roles in northern Nigeria began to change significantly once women got the vote in 1975. "After that, in their domestic, religious, and cultural organizations, women began debating how they should educate other women about involvement in political affairs, the importance of the franchise, and what the right to vote meant in terms of their political and social responsibilities," says Mikell, who first noted these developments during a visit to Maiduguri, a city in northeastern Nigeria, in 1981. "They were discussing these issues quietly. Essentially, they were establishing a new grassroots agenda for women's involvement in national politics. Men, nevertheless, have not been prepared to hear about women's increasing participation because it contradicts the official line about women and their place in society."

The Future in the Past

On her recent visit, Mikell found that Muslim women had made great strides in claiming social and cultural legitimacy for expanded roles of their organizations. Interestingly, they have based their claims on past historical and cultural traditions as well as on current needs. The women in the region of the north she visited are members of the Hausa/ Fulani group. The Hausa had converted to Islam in the early 19th century when the Fulani, a Muslim people, conquered the area, and the groups have since intermarried. "In recent years, Muslim women have begun to discuss how, in the past, there were things they as Hausa women had been allowed to do, particularly in the public sphere," Mikell says. They began telling stories about Hausa queens who during their rule had mobilized women to various public ends.

"Essentially, the women have been restoring this ethnic cultural memory," Mikell says. "So contemporary women began to draw on these traditions to remind themselves that in pre-Islamic times, they had the capacity to do all the things that they were now, as Muslim women, beginning to do. I found this fascinating. It has helped them gain the confidence to carve out a broader participatory role."

Education for Citizenship

Nigeria's Muslim society--as with most African societies--has two distinct organizational structures, one for men and one for women. Traditionally, this has allowed strong women to emerge as leaders within their own groups, Mikell says. Further, most of the institutional strength at the community level lies with women and their organizations. Once women gained the vote, it became necessary for politicians to campaign at the grassroots level and appeal to women, their organizations, and their leaders. Women, in turn, began to take on grassroots political issues, to support national peace efforts by electing local and national peace candidates, and to field women candidates.

As part of the politicization of women, women leaders have established new schools for girls and women called Islamia schools, which means schools that teach the tradition of Islam. (These are apart from traditional schools. The literacy rate for Muslim females is estimated at below 40 percent, lower than for women of other cultural groups in Nigeria.) However, Islamia schools also teach women about their public responsibilities to the community, which include voting and electing local leaders, including women leaders. But Muslim men have generally not adjusted to the new reality, Mikell notes. "To say 'Muslim woman politician' is also in most cases to say 'divorced.' "

The women themselves openly discuss the personal price they have to pay for stepping into the public arena. "Many women say they tried to politicize their husbands, to convince them that they were being good mothers and maintaining the homes," Mikell says. "They argued that it was important for them to participate for the sake of their daughters and the women in the community." But the husbands, who were usually harassed by other men, generally succumbed to social pressure and elected to divorce.

The women who become political leaders are usually over 40, they have had their children, and because polygamy is a fact of life they have already had to share their husbands, Mikell notes. They say they saw no more advantages to staying married. "If they were going to be divorced for actions they thought so important to the future of women, then so be it," Mikell says. "They say it's a choice they had to make."

Ruling Elite Oppose Women

On the national level, male leaders seem concerned about the growing strength of women and their organizations among a broad range of ethnic groups, Mikell says. Indeed, many women leaders fear for their lives in the wake of the murder on June 4, 1996 of Kudirat Abiola, a female Muslim leader of the country's prodemocracy movement. Abiola also was the wife of Moshood Abiola, who reputedly won Nigeria's 1993 presidential election. The military cancelled the election and General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's current military ruler, seized power and jailed Abiola. Abiola's wife was lobbying for his release and leading other human rights initiatives. "The women I spoke to believe the ruling elite really didn't want a democratic leader like Kudirat Abiola to emerge," Mikell says. "A number of women leaders, particularly in the south, said they feel very threatened now."

In the Muslim north, women say that it's going to take a long time to change society. "They say, 'We don't wish to be perceived as being outside our culture, so we are going to have to work slowly. We need to educate men that we can be good Islamic women while working for the betterment of our community and region.' "

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