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Women
The position of women changed in society partly in line with what was happening
to men. In the rural areas, more and more men were taking up paid work in agriculture
or mining, which often took them far away from their homes. So women and children
ended up doing more agricultural work.
In towns and cities women's education under a Christian missionary direction
took root. The oldest girls' school in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Annie Walsh Memorial
School, was set up in Sierra Leone in 1847. In 1907 the first girls' school
was established in Lagos.
 Listen
to Leti Hyde Forster one of the pupils at the school
Hear students singing at Annie Walsh Memorial School
Women's views and interests began to be voiced in newspapers and magazines, for
example the Nnamdi Azikwe's publication The Pilot had a women's page in it.
The Sierra Leone Daily Mail featured women's points of view and snap shots of
domestic life on a regular basis.
"When my husband has finished a boiled egg, he always
reverses the shell in the eggcup, making the egg appear untouched. This childish
habit never fails to annoy me."
Female
Contributor to the Daily Mail, 1936.
Women's organisations sprung up all over the continent. In Nigeria, the Lagos
Women's League was founded. In Mombasa, Kenya, Muslim dance societies were set
up. In South Africa the Bantu Women's League was created. A number of South
African women writers emerged. Victoria Swaartbooi, Lilith Kakaza, and Violet
Dube produced short stories and short novels, in Xhosa and Zulu.
POLITICAL WOMEN
Politically women had been active down the ages, often in prominent positions
as spirit mediums or queens. For example, Queen Nzinga of Angola in the 16th
and 17th century; Yaa Asantewa (1830-1921) of the Ashanti and Nehanda of Zimbabwe
in the 19th century.
Between
the world wars there are a number of instances of women challenging colonial
authority. In 1929 political protest triggered among other things by high
taxes in south eastern Nigeria, took on a form of mass militancy. Women went
about attacking factories and government offices in Owerri Province.
During
the Second World War, in Senegal, the Joola priestess Aline Sitoe protested against
the demands put on farmers to produce large quantities of rice. Some women built
on the status they acquired through their husbands. For example Mrs. Roberts, the
wife of the first President of Liberia J. J. Roberts, was an energetic fundraiser
and travelled abroad for that purpose long after her husband's death.
"During a visit to London in 1910, this writer met
Mrs. Roberts at the home of Mr. William Archer, the first coloured man to become
Mayor of Battersea, a district of the Metropolis. Mrs. Roberts notwithstanding
the weight of ninety one years, was clear in mind and wonderfully active. She
was in England on official business.
In previous years she had secured considerable
money to erect a hospital in Monrovia, and was endeavouring to enlist the support
of English friends to supplement the same through generous gifts."
Haile Q. Brown, Homespun Heroines.
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