Includes index.

Bibliography: p. 211-216.

Front Cover; critique influence change; More Critical Praise for Male Daughters, Female Husbands; About the Author; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Foreword; Preface to the Critique Influence Change Edition; Photographs; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; lgbo Women and Women's Literature; Area and Background; The Town of Nnobi; Time Span and Method; Notes; Part 1: The 19th Century; 1. Gender and the Economy; Myths of Origin and Gender; Ecology, Production and Gender Ideology; Wealth and Gender; Land and 'Male Daughters'; Land and Wives; Redistribution of Other Family Wealth. Women's Economic ActivitiesWomen, Marketing and Cash; Notes; 2. Women, Wealth, Titles and Power; Ekwe Title; Involuntary Male Titles; Two Prominent Obi(s) in 19th-Century Nnobi Society; The 'Big Man', Eze Okigbo; The Dominant Wife, lfeyinwa 'Olinke'; Notes; 3. Gender and Political Organization; Descent Structure; Political Administration; 'Big Men' and Ekwe Women Compared; Traditional Political Organizations: Gender Status, Interests and Rights; Organization of Patrilineage Men; Organization of Patrilineage Daughters; Kinship Morality and Gender; Daughter's Child, Nwadiana Category. Organization of Patrilineage WivesOrganization of Nnobi Women; Notes; 4. The Politics of Motherhood: Women and the Ideology-Making Process; Marriage; Marriage Songs and Gender Roles; Birth; The Post-Natal Confinement: Ino Ngwuo; Maternity Songs and Gender Roles; Death; Mourning; Funeral Songs and Gender Roles; Folk-tales and Gender Roles; Notes; 5. The Ideology of Gender; Language and Gender; Gender Division of Space; General Beliefs about Men and Women; How They Made Them 'Men'; Coming into Womanhood, lgba Agboghobia; Notes; 6. Ritual and Gender; The Goddess Idemili; The Hunter/Deity, Aho. Ikpu Okwa Festival and Patriarchal IdeologyPatriarchy versus Matriarchy?; Spirit Possession and Gender Ideals; Ritual Homage; Notes; Part 2: The Colonial Period; 7. Colonialism and the Erosion of Women's Power; Christianity: A New Gender Reality in the Religious Sphere; Changes in Marriage Practice and Gender Relations; Origin of the Problem: The Indigenous Institution of 'Female Husband'; The Problem: Reinterpretation of the Institution of 'Female Husband'; Notes; 8. The Erosion of Women's Power; Western Education and the Invisibility of Women. The Exclusion of Women from the Colonial Local Administrative SystemEze Okoli, the First Igwe of Nnobi, and the Birth of a New Era of Male Domination; Women and the New Cash Economy; Notes; Part 3: The Post-Independence Period; 9. The Marginalization of Women's Position; Women and Local Politics; Women and Local Political Issues: 1946-60; Women and Local Political Issues: 1960-82; New Gender Realities which Contributed to the Arrests; The Collapse of NWO: 1980; The Response of the Women; Notes; 10. Wealth, Titles and Motherhood; Women's New Poverty; Men's New Wealth.

In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands, to critical acclaim. This compelling and highly original book frees the subject position of 'husband' from its affiliation with men, and goes on to do the same for other masculine attributes, dislocating sex, gender and sexual orientation. Boldly arguing that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference, Male Daughters, Female Husbands examines the structures in African society that enabled people to achieve power, showing that roles were not rigidly masculinized nor feminized. At a time when gender and queer theory is viewed by some as being stuck in an identity-politics rut, this outstanding study not only warns against the danger of projecting a very specific, Western notion of difference onto other cultures, but calls us to question the very concept of gender itself.