The Nigerian Rural Woman’s Economy: The Understudied Phenomenon

Abstract

The Nigeria rural women have been misrepresented by researchers as being poor, economically disadvantaged, dependant on their husbands and ever requiring help, and empowerment. Studies, disregard contribution to family, economy and commerce by rural women. Their contribution to home welfare and stability in husbands’ business and trade have been scored low in the assessment of women’s contribution to national economy. The paper therefore reviews this assertions and attempts to redefine the rural woman’s capacity and contribution to the economic life of rural population and the nation as a whole. We hope to determine these not through statistical measures but through secondary data, of literature contents to uncover how much of research studies on women economy, have been done on rural women’s economy. This paper posits that, rural women engage in vertical economy. They contribute more to national development than their urban counterpart. when they help their husbands work on his farms and engage in commerce of agro-allied products, arts and crafts like cloths making etc. this is the vertical occupation and vocational economy, while urban women engage in horizontal economy with their employed jobs, indirect trade and less of production. They work for government as civil servants or private servants. Rural women mobilise themselves for social and indigenous cultural roles as leaders, recognised by men. Meanwhile the difficulty of urban or city women to lead their communities and groups where men are dominant is more visible, wherein those in the cities are described as sophisticated. As researchers keep emphasising that urban women are more civilised, rural women are far from being poor than city women, because they own their own businesses and are self-employed. Those rural women lacks, are basic amenities and accesses to financial and basic social amenities, which social institutions do less or not supply. Empowerment programmes are recommended to explore this knowledge, for a more sustaining programme in future for rural women.