Beyond Subjugation: A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s Agency and Informal Authority in Nigeria’s Shea Economy

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 5: Gender and Work

Abstract

Extant scholarships portray African women as subjugated victims within patriarchal systems. The objective of this study was to explore how women in Nigeria’s Shea-producing communities actively exercise agency and informal authority. Data were collected from 32 Shea resource users, community leaders, and state actors through semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis revealed that women’s embodied labour functions as political, economic and ecological agency that challenges dominant narratives of African women as passive victims of subjugation and dependence, illustrating instead that their authority emerges through moral credibility, relational negotiation, ecological stewardship and community responsibilities. Through truthfulness, emotional restraint, communal responsibility and collective vigilance, women enforce environmental taboos, report offenders to chiefs, and mediate community conflicts. I argue that these networks and practices constitute informal agency that sustains the Shea economy and positions women as actors rather than victims. By centring women’s bodies, labour, obligation and responsibility as instruments of governance, I reframe Shea production as an economic site where power is enacted through cooperation, ethics, and collective responsibility in African rural communities. This study extends African feminist scholarship and highlights the economic, political, and ethical dimensions of agency. It is imperative that sociological interventions aimed at equity recognise and analyse women’s leadership within local communities in the Global South, rather than assume external empowerment is always necessary.

Author

• Idowu Omowunmi Alabi, Wayne State University