Turbulent but I must endure in silence: Female breadwinners and survival in Southwestern Nigeria

Introduction

Fathers, like mothers, have experienced shifts in their family responsibilities and domestic roles and these shifts in roles are traceable to work and family care necessities (Solomon, 2014). Solomon (2014), like many others (Munsch, 2015; Teachman, 2010), studied developed societies, and these studies make constructions and conceptualisations of these shifts in family roles and general social transformations somewhat understandable. What is different in African contexts, however, is that while this social change is also being experienced, more studies are needed to fully understand its ramifications and trajectories. Hence, while more men are increasingly coming to terms with this change and even reconstructing their identities objectively and positively, this is not the whole story in Nigeria and Africa and more research is needed in the body of knowledge on the issue. Nigeria, like many other African countries and developing societies, is largely patriarchal, giving most authority, control and ultimate decision-making across social institutions to men (Bammeke, 2007). The context of home/family is not an exception to this normative process and situation and it is within this context that breadwinning and general gender constructs operate.

Culturally and practically, men are the head of families and societies and they are expected to transform the contours of headship to breadwinning for their families, including providing for wives, children and even extended families in some cases (Akanle and Ejiade, 2012; Bammeke, 2007). In the order of subliminal division of labour belied by social dictates, women are thus expected to be in charge of household chores and family care, such as cooking and taking care of the children and husband (Akanle and Ejiade, 2012). These roles rest on traditional gender ideology driven by strong social norms that have become definitive in most African societies (Deutsch, 1999; Nolan et al., 2000; Ntoimo and Abanihe, 2014; Osawa, 2006; Rohrbaugh, 1981). Change is the only constant thing in human existence, especially with the ascendancy of globalisation, westernisation, urbanisation and industrialisation in Africa and Nigeria (Akanle, 2011), and this change is occurring in gender and family roles in Nigeria and established gender norms and family roles are being re-experienced and reconstructed within existing realities.

While changes in family structure are not entirely new – as observed in the shift in the predominance of nuclear families over extended families in urban centres (Martin and Kats, 2003) that was first seen in the nineteenth century- changes in traditional gender roles of breadwinning in the African family system are relatively new. The implications of these recent configurations of family roles, as processes of social change, may not necessarily be stable and peaceful, thereby necessitating more up-to-date research like this current offering. This is particularly true because as societies transform from the traditional pattern to a more modern one as the result of internal and external factors, the consequences are mostly felt in the family because the family is the primary embodiment of values and social norms (Gaunt, 2013; Gilligan et al., 2015) that reverberate at the level of other institutions (Ntoimo and Abanihe, 2014). Social change often affects the norms and rules of the gender roles of members of the family as can be seen in the emergence and development of dual-earner couples (Martin and Kats, 2003) and this has been the beginning of the challenge to traditional male roles in providing for the family (Nwosuji, 2008; Munsch, 2015; Teachman, 2010).

What then happens when established and familiar arrangements are ruptured by the development of new socio-economic realities in African societies to the extent that women become the main providers of family livelihood? What implications will this rupture have for the family as a micro unit of the society? These are questions that much of the literature on African families has not sufficiently answered and they are interrogated in this article by investigating the challenges that breadwinning women face and how they cope with these challenges through an African case study.

Theoretical historicities of gender relations and breadwinning in Nigeria

When an African man solely provides for his family, it is a symbol of subjective control – he who pays the piper dictates the tune. This is the familiar and familial arrangement that has sustained African marriages and families over time. Within the remit of the history of gender relations in Nigeria, especially in traditional Yorubaland, the cultural region within which Lagos, the study location, is situated, a man’s role as head of his family is not contested, and the woman is seen as playing a complementary role. Women are thus expected to contribute to the upkeep of the family through having their own farms/businesses and by selling the products for cash to assist their husbands with the management of their family. Generally, the complementary roles of women are very important in a society where polygamy has been the norm and where there is often competition for scarce resources. Within this gender and cultural system, women, for example, took care of their children themselves. However, against this background, women were not expected to entirely take over the role of family breadwinning but to complement their husbands, who were expected to be the frontline breadwinners.

The role of the male as breadwinner and the role of the working woman, however, has more colonial history (Akanle and Ejiade, 2012; Lindsay, 1999; Parry, 2014). Within the history of Nigeria, women and men have played different domestic roles and the nature and implications of these roles for gender relations and domestic power play, as well as for the constellations and negotiations across ages, are largely dynamic (Akanle and Ejiade, 2012). Male breadwinning roles ascended and became more deep-rooted with colonialism and its auxiliary gender dictates and this reconstructed women as subordinate to men/as wards of men. This built and drove widespread dependency across colonial social institutions, particularly in the family. Colonialism consequently traded off the existing, more benevolent and complementary gender role-play that was originally common in pre-colonial African societies. Parry (2014) described the emergent, rigid, colonial gender division of labour that undervalued female breadwinners (FBW) as archaic and hiding behind constructions of reforms (p. iv). Unfortunately, the archaic working woman and subordinate constructions of the FBW were/are very effective in that they largely determine gender relational outcomes and they have a lasting legacy in most African societies.

The dynamics of the colonial political economy is key to moderating gender relations. For example, cash crop production – the mainstay and cash driver of colonial economics/economy – was assigned to men, making them become more empowered than their female counterparts. This consequently gave important economic and social power and influence to men, while systematically disempowering women. Hence, this made women very dependent on and subordinate to men in colonial and early post-colonial Yorubaland, for instance. Within this historical context, Yoruba women in particular have been able to achieve some measure of economic independence and have the ability to act as breadwinners in the relatively urbanised Yoruba systems but they do not take over family care and breadwinning outright from the men. This is even though the unstable and unpredictable natures of urban economic realities sometimes make women the providers for their families when husbands lose their jobs.

Female breadwinning is accentuated as more women enter the labour market and get jobs, including those jobs previously masculinised, as forces of globalisation break traditional socio-economic and cultural traditions and barriers. This is especially so in the service sector and as manufacturing and industrial sectors shrink and rationalise jobs popularly and traditionally held by urban men. This has led to more men being out of work and more women getting into jobs, thereby leading to a breadwinning role reversal in which more women become family/household breadwinners/economic lifelines while more men become marginal and complementary family providers or outright dependents on their women/wives for livelihood and economic survival. Aside from globalisation, the increase in the service sector and the decrease in the manufacturing sector as part of urbanisation, is also a major factor driving breadwinning roles to be reconfigured. As urbanisation aggravates the traditional roles, the rate of divorce, and the numbers of working women and single mothers (Akanle, 2011; Akanle and Ejiade, 2012; Lindsay, 1999; Parry, 2014) have risen and this has further driven the prevalence of women family breadwinners. Against the backdrop of the dynamics of colonial and post-colonial African society, the issue of women breadwinners becomes a major and nuanced activity that must be better understood, and this article contributes to this understanding.

Societies are faced with increased female breadwinning due to emergent social, educational and economic realities and family roles are consequently renegotiated and readjusted even though this often takes place informally within existing socio-cultural orthodoxies (Allegretto and Lynch, 2010; Brewster and Padavic, 2000; Doucet 2004; Drago et al., 2004; Galinsky et al., 2009; Munsch, 2015; Rochlen et al., 2008; Scott and Braun, 2009; Solomon, 2014; Teachman, 2010). The consequences of female breadwinning can be tumultuous and this is why studies in other contexts have found that wives/partners in female breadwinning households face more stress and those households/families are usually less stable (Cheung and Choi, 2013; Kanji and Schober, 2014; Munsch, 2015; Teachman, 2010; Youngjoo, 2010).

The ramifications and drivers of this paradox, ¹ however, need to be understood in the developing and industrialising contexts of Africa. When women are abused in the context of home, not only do they suffer the socio-economic and psychological consequences when the women decide to stay in the abusive marriage (Payne and Wermeling, 2009), children in such households also suffer directly and indirectly. In fact, children in such households suffer severe consequences from such abuses even though this is seldom recognised and appreciated. Studies have shown that children are still in their sensitive socialisation period (Goodwin, et al. 2012; Goudreau, 2012; Marie, 2010) and this explains why children from households where women are abused have lower/poorer school performance, suffer low self-esteem, anxiety and depression; experience distant relations from parents as they suffer shame and guilt; and are more likely to be women abusers themselves in later life if they are males. The effect on females is that they tend to be more timid in their own marriages later in life. The increases in women’s place in the labour force, earnings and breadwinning are ironically occurring at a time when many nations are experiencing a slowed economy, reduced foreign exchange earnings, increased unemployment and a high rate of retrenchment. ² In Nigeria, for example, unemployment is in excess of 30%, foreign exchange earnings are on a gradual decrease as the international price of oil – the primary national foreign exchange earner for Nigeria (Sanusi, 2012) – continues to fall and poverty remains at almost 70% (Akanle, 2013, 2014; Akanle et al., 2014; Central Intelligence Agency, 2015; World Bank, 2015). This is also compounded by the fact that many multinational corporations, like Unilever, Dunlop and Michelin, and oil companies like Shell and Chevron, for example, among many others, are moving out of the country due to lack of electricity and general infrastructural deficits, militancy, insecurity and corruption. These corporations are closing production sites and moving to neighbouring West African countries like Ghana and Senegal.

Women’s new skills, multi-tasking capabilities and the required feminine composition of popular jobs like marketing, front desk officers, hospitality, aviation, corporate secretarial work, foreign diplomacy, banking and telecoms, for example, thus attract earnings and serve as important lifelines for some families, even as they struggle with the high cost of living in urban spaces. Even for those not in formal employment, more women operate and thrive in the informal sector of the economy in the southern part of Nigeria. A lot of women operate in this informal sector, and we may liken it to the feminisation of the Nigerian informal sector. Many women thus inadvertently become the main breadwinners in some Nigerian cities today as opposed to previous epochs (Akanle and Olutayo, 2012) and they provide more financially for their families (Boushey, 2009; Drago et al., 2004; Meisenbach, 2010) while many still bear the burden of domestic chores (Bianchi et al., 2007; Budig and England, 2001). Hence, according to Friedman and Marshall (2004) even when some women are now breadwinners in their families, they still perform the traditional role of care-giving more than their male counterparts, who now perform even less, since women are taking over males’ traditional breadwinning roles (Gaunt, 2013; Vukovic, 2006) contrary to the conclusions of Solomon (2014) in the USA’s case.

While historically, it is not unusual for women to play supportive roles in families, among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria for instance, it is commonly believed that a man with the woman/wife as the main breadwinner is bewitched (won ti fi ori e gba paro – ‘The evil ones have devilishly substituted his destiny’). The idea of female breadwinning in a patriarchal society is considered a taboo as gender roles and gender norms driven by African patriarchy have structurally made female breadwinning unexpected, undesirable and incompatible with the systematic arrangement of societies (Coleman and Franiuk, 2011; Doyle-Morris, 2011; Jessel, 1990; Marshall, 1994; Millette, 1997; Ntoimo and Abanihe, 2014; Oakley, 1974; Omadjohwoefe, 2011; Tiger and Fox, 1992). It is therefore not expected that women should be the family’s main breadwinner even if they earn more than their husbands. This is expressed by cultural idioms among the Yoruba that eni to leru lo leru (‘It is the owner of the slave that owns his/her load’) and igi ko le ga ju oni re lo (‘The tree cannot be higher than the farmer who owns the farm and the tree’) – the woman/wife/female breadwinner is the metaphoric slave and tree and the slave owner and farmer/tree-owner is the husband here. It is within these cultural constructions and historical specificities that female breadwinning is often interpreted and related to within the families and larger society, making the phenomenon poorly appreciated and neglected both in practice and literature even when it has implications and consequences for the actors in the socio-economic and cultural spaces of the family and larger society.

In this article, we refer to female breadwinners as women who work outside the home, earn income/money and contribute most or entirely to the household income and livelihood through formal and/or informal economic engagements. We place our contributions in this article within the historical gender specificities that construct women as traditional, supportive providers for their families rather than as main/sole breadwinners. This is because even though traditional African women have always traded, they were never expected to be main family breadwinners – female breadwinning has been part of the antinomies of recent social developments (Adesina, 2010; Akanle, 2011; Akanle and Ejiade, 2012; Aina, 1995, 1998; Barry, 1987; Drago et al., 2004; George, 2007; Meisenbach, 2010; Ntoimo and Abanihe, 2014; Olutayo, 2005; Otite and Ogionwo, 2006; Smit, 2002; Smits et al., 2003). This article contributes to the maturing discourses on female breadwinning and sit-at-home husbands in contemporary societies (Drago et al., 2004; Munsch, 2015; Solomon, 2014; Teachman, 2010 ) and starts new discussions around this emerging phenomenon in developing contexts of Africa.

While literature is already building up in Asia and the Caribbean on the subject (Cheung and Choi, 2013; Safa, 1995; Yeung and Yap, 2013; Yu, 2015) not much has been done in African contexts thereby necessitating this article. This article is a departure from the over-narrated ancillaries and trajectories of subsistence of traditional patriarchy, feminism and gender (in)equality (Akanle and Ejiade, 2012; Atsenuwa, 2011; George, 2007; McIntosh, 2009; Olutayo, 1994, 2005; Olutayo and Yusuff, 2012;Smit, 2002). Many established narratives are also dated by explaining contemporary gender and feminine realities in a context beyond households’ experiences (Aina, 1998; Awe, 1992; Mathabane, 1995 for instance) to empirically approach a more nuanced and definitive social change with systemic implications. Against this background, we investigated the challenges and coping strategies of female breadwinners in one of the only three megacities of Africa – Lagos.

Research method and process

The study that informed this article was carried out in Lagos – a megacity in Nigeria. Lagos is a city-state and it is the smallest in the country although about the most populous and the most industrially and economically viable. It is also the most urbanised in the country being one of only three megacities of Africa (Akanle and Olutayo, 2012; Ntoimo and Abanihe, 2014). This research was heuristic and due to the research problem under examination, we adopted a solely qualitative research technique in collecting and analysing data (Abanihe, 2002; Heyat, 2002). The data collection method adopted was in-depth interviews (IDIs) with 20 female breadwinning families. In the households, interviews were conducted with both males (husbands) and the women (the female breadwinners) to have balanced perspectives of the problematic. The total duration of the fieldwork was about eight months in 2014. Different households with female breadwinners were visited for data collection.

A non-probabilistic sampling strategy of snowballing was adopted for this study. This was necessitated by the nature of the research problem and subjects as we had to trace relevant female breadwinning families across space and time. Data gathered and used for this article were from spouses (study population) in female breadwinning households to capture their worldviews of challenges and coping mechanisms in response to the change they now experience. Interview sessions were in convenient places as chosen by interviewees and in locations where they were able to discuss freely without external or internal interjections and opinion influencers. It was also important to guarantee neutral and free ambience, particularly in an issue that is emerging and is somewhat contrary to traditionally established and normatively sanctioned lived experiences in the context of home and beyond. Throughout the research process we paid very detailed and close attention to ethical issues of anonymity, informed consent and prevention of harm for all the households, interviewees and the researchers.

Data analysis and results

This section presents the analysis of data and results from the fieldwork. Even though data and findings were analysed and interpreted, we adopted cautious objective analysis and interpretation to allow for original perspectives, voices and worldviews of the people studied. This is against the realisation that sometimes it is possible to over analyse and over interpret data to the extent that original orientations and worldviews are ultimately lost or reduced to mere appendages. Hence, while we present and analyse the perspectives from the field, we have decided to also use a number of narratives to contextualise analysis and findings. These original narratives serve as ethnographies and those used represent modal perspectives except when otherwise stated.

Challenges for female breadwinners and the families

Findings on this issue were very instructive. Breadwinning households face different challenges and these challenges impact the family in a variety of ways. The majority of female breadwinners and their families had confronted some challenges and these were identified. These challenges include frequent spousal arguments; the woman being overstressed and not having sufficient personal time due to the family burden; and low respect for men by the women and children. These challenges are often recipes for domestic conflict. It was also gathered that relations between husbands and women are usually strained and the level of happiness and fulfillment is usually low because men cannot perform their traditional roles of breadwinning while the women are performing the unusual role of main breadwinners. The role of extended family is also somewhat negative in female breadwinners’ household circumstances. For instance, once the woman’s family discover that she is the family’s lead breadwinner, they often disrespect the husband, put him under pressure and begin to see him as incapable of taking care of their daughter (the wife). On the other hand, the husband’s/man’s extended relations may accuse the woman (female breadwinner) of being the negative social and spiritual source of their son’s misfortune.

The objective perception of these traditionally strange roles exchanges may be difficult for the extended kin who still construct realities within traditional prisms. The tendency is to also interpret the female breadwinning situation in spiritual terms, in which case the husband’s kin see the female breadwinner as bewitching their son (the husband) to enrich herself and make herself the main breadwinner. Generally, the challenges faced by female breadwinning families have both exogenous and endogenous sources, both constellating to enburden the female breadwinner as a social and cultural victim without recourse to a formal justice system and without objective space in the informal and alternative ones. The endogenous ones are those developed by family members who perceive and react to the female breadwinning situation in urban spaces that are often impoverished and threatened.

Where everyone comes to terms with this development and reacts positively, the challenges are, however, minimised. Where family members refuse to accept the situation and perceive and react to it negatively, the challenges are profound and spiral. The endogenous factors sense and relate to the exogenous factors and determine the challenges outcomes. The exogenous factors include the role of in-laws and the extended families of the spouses, spousal and child social networks, general cultural domains and religious expectations. These exogenous factors play very important roles. It was found that where the influences of extended families, in-laws and social networks are limited, the challenges are minimal. The role of culture is constant within the general patriarchal space but the role of religion is definitive. Those households with a higher level of religiosity tend to have fewer self-confessed challenges and are better able to religiously rationalise challenges.

Interviewees maintain that they pretend to their extended families and in-laws to the extent that many do not know the true situation of breadwinning – whether the woman is actually the lead breadwinner or the man/husband. This once again shows the level of social disapproval and informal criminalisation of female breadwinning as it is seen as a deviation from expected behaviours. This pretense/cover up is usually to protect the dignity of the man who is the expected and default breadwinner. This is often done to make the man appear to the outsiders as the lead breadwinner so that he can retain his dignity in the kinship and social networks. It was found that even though the females are the breadwinners, men do still expect respect and obedience from their wives and children and this endogenous factor is found to be forceful and violent, and predisposes most of the women to domestic violence (DV)/intimate partner violence (IPV)/gender-based violence (GBV). The women often suffer in silence to prevent abuse and assault that will never be redressed or punished by the justice system as such assaults and crimes are seen as private and family matters to be best settled within the family and community members informally.

A married man of 39 years old captured the interplay of the endogenous and exogenous factors succinctly:

Well, disagreements set in. That is, there are always disagreements and arguments in the family and in the argument; the woman is very emotional to say some things that lead to the husband feeling bad or disrespected. As for the relatives, it is not their business to interfere but in case they were able to find out, I’m sure they will not be happy about it.

Another interviewee, a woman of 45 years of age, opined:

One faces a number of challenges. One is that sometimes, the one will have a hectic day at work, by the time you get home, you will be faced with household work also and you will not be happy. Sometimes you will not be able to carry out that aspect properly, so problems will start coming in like that. As for the relatives, there are some reactions especially those relations that are staying nearby seeing what is going but if they are far away and the man does not interact with them telling them what is happening in his family, they may not interfere much. Taking my own as an example, my husband is not the type that discusses his problems with any member of his family.

From the above excerpts, it is possible to observe the interplay of the endogenous and exogenous factors in the home. Even though the female breadwinner’s husband is able to keep the relatives afar and the woman does not bring her own into the situation, it is clear that there is an acknowledgement of the relatives as critical actors in the situation. A younger married woman, 32 years of age, elaborated on the trajectories of the challenges, the unconventional financial burden of the woman and the role of children’s ages in determining intensity of challenges:

There are many of them – challenges – especially when there are grown up children – school fees, clothing the children, feeding them, house rent. There are lots of challenges, but if the children are still very young, maybe between the age of zero to two years, we can say the challenges are not that much but when the children are between the age of three to 15 years, the challenges are really much because one (woman) will feed the children, clothe them, accommodation, you still need to take care of your own self. So the challenges are much. As for the relations, some understand while some do not. Some relations will be influencing the woman to seek divorce or even try to frustrate the man to leave (divorce or separate from) the woman.

Another woman of 49 years of age, who elaborated on the complexity of the challenges and brought all the stakeholders in the female breadwinning households to account maintained:

The challenge faced is that the children will not respect the father once they notice that everything is been taken care of by their mother. Even when their father talks to them, they will disregard his words. Sometimes, even the woman will want to act as if she is the one that has the final say in terms of decision-making in the family –feminine authority take over and exchange in the context of home ³ – and there might be some misunderstanding if the man should refuse often leading to violence and conflict. As for the relations/relatives, there would be reactions if the woman opens up and lets her family know that she is the one carrying the responsibilities in the house. The family will not be happy, one thing they will be thinking of is that is it not better for her to come back home/separate/divorce instead of labouring and stressing herself in her husband’s house. But if she did not open up to her family, there won’t be any reaction, they will not know what is going on. Even if she wants to give anything to her family, she will present it as my husband said I should give this to papa and this to mama so that they won’t be disrespectful to the man unless if the woman tells them.

Having considered the challenges, it is also important to explore the coping strategies of the female breadwinners. This is to enable sufficient capturing of the survival cycle of the women and their households. This is important because even though the women face challenges and are susceptible to victimisation, violence and subjective socio-cultural stress and pressures, family disorganisation and eventual divorce, they subsist in spaces and time and navigate the social change domain. What then are the ramifications and trajectories of this subsistence relative to coping strategies?

The coping mechanisms of female breadwinners

Findings here enrich data, practice and policies as pathways to understanding family survival and feminine existentialities in different situations and contexts. It is also important to be interested in how women cope with domestic and non-domestic work responsibilities since these are two critical role interlayerings in a typical African setting. Unfortunately, in the female breadwinners’ case, these roles appear to be operating in contradictory spaces relative to breadwinning. The single most common coping strategy adopted by the families is religion. The majority of interviewees alluded to the role of religion in assisting them to cope. Most of the interviewees claim that they draw inspiration and strength to withstand the turbulence of female breadwinning households. According to them, there are teachings in the Holy Books (Holy Bible and Holy Quran) about hope, endurance, understanding and perseverance. This is particularly important, bearing in mind that 95% of our interviewees are either Christians or Muslims with only 5% claiming not to associate with either and are either traditionalists or atheists.

Most of the respondents believe that only God can help them survive and cope with their challenges. That is, it is only by God’s grace that they still have hope and that is why the women have the patience to maintain the new position they occupy in the family as the breadwinners. They are also of the opinion that through belief in God and prayer the situation can become better and the man can come back to his economic feet again and take up his breadwinning responsibilities. In the area of the management of domestic chores and occupational work, the majority of the interviewees maintain that division of labour and proper scheduling is a way of managing both activities. Female interviewees mostly insist that some of the work will be shared with the children and sometimes they employ a home help who does some house chores while the woman and the children are away at work and school so that the family can live peacefully as most of the men must not be asked to do chores as this may cause conflict and even violence sometimes (Akanle and Ejiade, 2012). This is a way of ensuring some stability and reduces the huge stress and workload of a woman who is also the family breadwinner.

Many of the women explain their routine. For example, how they wake up as early as 4 am to do domestic work before leaving for work. They, however, maintained that for the coping mechanisms to be sustainable and for the family to cope with the situation and the challenges peacefully, the husbands must be able and ready to be hardworking and employed or get something to do to change the situation as the most desired situation is that the male is the family breadwinner. That means, ultimately, that there is a limit to the peaceful endurance of the female breadwinning households in the long run. Findings show some contradictions in household engagements by role and gender. While a number of men insist that they participate in a number of household chores, most of the women maintain that they bear the burden of domestic chores. There is thus a disjunction in the engagement in household chores by spousal confession. This contradiction can be explained at three levels. The women perceive that the male’s involvement in domestic chores is too marginal, inconsequential and trivial compared to the domestic workload. The women may also refuse to acknowledge publicly that they allow their spouses to do chores – a taboo. Or, the men over-exaggerate their involvement in domestic chores, either because they honestly misinterpret the real significance of their domestic chores or they opt for decided and conscious exaggeration. The ethnographic excerpts below put the findings above in context and represent interpretive voice-over narratives. A 39-year-old man maintained:

Through the grace of God, everything is possible. And I would also help in the little way I can, at least I might not be financially buoyant but I can help in other things in the house – like house chores.

The man above actually alluded to the implications of religion and spousal role reversals and the adoption of the division of labour in households as an ameliorative coping strategy in female breadwinning households. The 64-year-old man below expanded the methods of coping, and alluded to the role of religion, discipline, division of labour and minimal involvement in chores:

Like in my family as Christians, we cope by reading and obeying the word of God, praying and also discipline. And in terms of managing the house, the woman is still the one cooking and cleaning, though she will go to work and come back. I help in ways that I can even though she will want to do everything by herself and also the children help in ways that they can also. When they come back from school, I will organise them to do certain works before their mother comes back from work.

The female breadwinner referred to by this man/husband is in the category earlier explained – the category of female breadwinner who will not allow her husband to get involved in chores in order not be labelled as abusing and bewitching the husband. Such women rather endure the entire burden even at the risk to their health and well-being. Most often, the husband’s involvement is therefore supervisory and marginal. The 45-year-old woman below gives the modal (the most common) perspective of the female breadwinners:

Everything is God. I will take myself as an example. Let’s say it is the time I don’t know God, sometimes it will get to some extent, I will feel like ‘Is it even worth it getting married in the first place?’. But when I meditated and read the word of God, I get inspired. There are women that face the same thing, by the time they attend fellowship and see that you are not the only one, and then you will feel encouraged and won’t look back doing anything. As for the house management, it is a very big challenge because like me, I wake up around 5 am and start working – doing chores. After selling for the day, because I operate food business, I have to prepare for the next day, by the time I get home, I am already worn out and that is around 10 pm. You won’t even have time to clean your house properly unless you take some days off.

This woman gives a vivid perspective that captures the world of a typical female breadwinner in the context of many regions of Africa, particularly the Sub-Saharan. From the excerpt, it is possible to notice the prevalence of the fellowships of female breadwinners even though these are usually unconfessed and unpopularised. They meet and share experiences silently in places like religious settings, offices and markets, compare experiences and draw inspiration from the fact that the case affects many women and not only them. Because of the stigma and taboo-like aura associated with the issue in traditional settings, everyone keeps the issue to him/herself. The woman above, for instance, vividly captured the role of religion, implying if not for her religion, perhaps she would have opted out of the family/marriage. She also painted the difficult picture of the domestic chore burden in households where there is no help from the man. The 48-year-old woman below, however, presents a household where there is assistance with domestic chores, even though the woman still bears a disproportionately higher burden of chores:

Prayers and encouragement for one another within the family. He will try as hard as possible to change the situation to where he can provide for the family. As for the house management, he learns how to do some house chores to help. The woman will also maximize her time by waking up early like say 4 to 5 am to get everything set and trying hard to come back early to keep the family working.

A 36-year-old husband provides a comprehensive account that is very insightful:

It is not easy for the family especially for the man. Being the man, he will want to provide everything, and as he couldn’t, he can lose that respect from the wife and children except if he has well-trained children but if he doesn’t, that means his time to meet his ancestors – die – is very close. So he has to buckle up and get himself a job and life goes on. As for the management of the house, it will be hectic. This time around, the man will have to come in and do most of the domestic jobs at home to assist the wife. There are some certain things you have to do to assist your wife at home. Like me, sometimes I wake up in the morning and sweep the house to assist my wife. I can go to the kitchen and wash the dishes, so that the woman will have time to go to work for the family. Then, I can take the children to school. These are little things the man will do that are relevant to reduce the domestic work of the wife.

This man provides an account of where the man can help reduce stress, enhance love, promote understanding and stabilise the home pragmatically, even without spiritual roles of religion as earlier alluded to by other interviewees.

Discussion of findings

Patriarchy and modernisation processes and forms are relevant here. Gender differences and diversity as well as inter-spousal relations in the society and the context of households are moderated, interpreted and driven by patriarchy and modernisation as found in the study. In the urban contexts like that of Lagos megacity, urbanisation and industrialisation driven by internal and external forces of modernisation intermix and interplay with patriarchy to give unique and emerging spousal forms and relations as seen in the cases of female breadwinning. Traditionally in patriarchal systems, men/husbands are by default expected to be the family heads and breadwinners. What is not factored into this social role expectation is that when societies modernise and change as in the case in the Lagos context, determiners of roles, the capacity to perform roles and the actual performance of roles change and the overall social systems change. Lagos, like much of urban Africa, is changing under the forces of modernisation and patriarchy is being confronted and interrogated.

Outcomes of interrogations and confrontations may, however, be different for different genders. For women, outcomes of interrogation may be frequently uncomplimentary, stressful, turbulent and/or even violent in many places in Africa. For instance, the World Health Organisation declared violence against women (VaW) as a Global Health Problem as at least 35% ⁴ of all women experience, and will still experience, both intimate and non-intimate partner violence. In Sub-Saharan Africa (West), the figure is even higher and more staggering. As high as 41.75% of women in West Africa (the region covering the research context) experience Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) (WHO, 2013). This is most likely to be underestimated as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) especially in the context of family – especially among spouses- is usually underreported because such women seldom publicly report IPV, GBV and general violence against women because of the social stigma and cultural backlash.

What happens, however, when there is a clash of expectations, performance, time and social processes? The nexus is the role of social actors across gender. When these gender roles and expectations are in conflict with objective realities of provisioning, social tension, instability and gender crises are unavoidable. Female breadwinning operates within complex socio-cultural and precarious economic systems. The conflict between traditional socio-cultural systems that construct subordinate gender identities for women and the more modern socio-economic systems that widen the employment and occupational spaces of women in the current urban spaces will certainly reconfigure current gender norms, expectations and the actual performance of breadwinning roles. Even though, traditionally and patriarchally men are expected to be the socio-economic heads of their families and financially cater for their households, the current economic realities show that recent market occurrences make these traditional expectations difficult and sometimes impossible and women fill the vacuum – since there must not be a vacuum in nature and social systems must respond to social processes to remain in order. The challenge, however, is that significant other actors remain fixated in the traditional space creating a huge gap and challenging for the nature of social change. Many, like the in-laws and the spouses themselves, remain in the immobility of cultural orientation and behavioural worldviews even when social change is continuous. The result is an existential threat to the socially perceived subordinate gender as the process of change must continue. When this occurs, the subordinate gender in the constellation of actions bears the brunt of social stagnation in time, space, expectation, orientation and action, even as social change calibrates and recalibrates.

Patriarchy is no doubt often conservative and resistant to change and has been underlined by deep-seated social norms that maintain gender inequality. Modernisation in the age of globalisation, however, poses a challenge to the immobility of patriarchy even though many actors have not come to terms with this confrontational social change thereby making objective gender appreciation and protection difficult. This is commonly so in mostly patriarchal African societies and the urban centres are not exempt since most urbanites have their roots and have been socialised within patriarchal systems. Most of what is observed and found in the female breadwinning challenges and coping mechanisms is traceable to the African and developing societies’ patriarchal forces (Aina, 1998; Gill and Mathews, 1995; Hoang and Yeoh, 2011; Ntoimo and Abanihe, 2014; Vukovic, 2006; Walby, 1997). This is more so against the background of Walby’s (1997), six structures of patriarchy; the patriarchal mode of production, patriarchal relations in paid employment, the state, male violence, patriarchal relations in sexuality, and the culture. Across these six structures, patriarchal sentiments are widespread and women’s opportunities and contributions, including at home, are seldom appreciated. Such contributions are even covered with secrecy from the male apologists who prefer to maintain the status quo, male privileges and female subordination to maintain the social order. All these have implications for family stability, domestic violence, women’s rights, feminism, criminology and justice systems and constructs.

With the emergence and development of female breadwinning, patriarchal boundaries are being renegotiated, even though yet practically unnoticed by many actors, and being reconstructed in the face of modernisation (Atsenuwa, 2011; Barry, 1986; Cunningham, 2008; Doucet, 2015; Heyat, 2002; Payne and Wermeling, 2009).This renegotiation may, however, not be without consequences, especially for women, unless the whole society, or most members at least, appreciate and objectively notice/accommodate the necessity and inevitability of the woman’s breadwinning role. Female breadwinning families face numerous challenges and these include fear of, or actual, disrespect for the man, tension, mental fatigue, stress, anxiety, socialisation anomalies, resignation to fate and endogenous and exogenous pressures. These are consistent with the findings of Blood and Wolfe (1960), Chesley (2011), Hood (1993) and Nolan et al., (2000), as female breadwinning families reconstruct and renavigate the contexts of authority structures and sources of care between masculinity and femininity (Brescoll and Uhlman, 2005; Coleman and Franiuk, 2011; Etaugh and Folger, 1998).

Different types of coping mechanisms are adopted by female breadwinning families but religion and allusion to God remain primary as the women rely on a hope of a better tomorrow when the man will become the breadwinner once more to satisfy social expectations and uphold the societal norms of family provision. While spouses/couples still stay together with their children as a family, psycho-social and economic pressures and inconsistencies threaten stability. The stability in this context, as observed, is also covert as potential and real instability are hidden beneath pretences to satisfy social expectations. Hence, even though couples believe in God and a better tomorrow, they are mostly sensitive and agree that the current situation is difficult and unwanted. They then mostly agree that the situation of female breadwinning can lead to divorce. Will overt instability not set in if female breadwinning persists, driven by modernisation, urbanisation and industrialisation as a contradictory reality in the face of conservative and resistant patriarchy? (Cheung and Choi, 2013; George, 2007; Gilligan et al., 2015; Munsch, 2015; Teachman, 2010; Yu, 2015).

Conclusion

Against the background of gender and feminist constructs and realities, this study finds that women carry a double burden, yet this burden is often not openly confessed for fear of the social implications. Many lean on religion and bear the burden in silence because of the usually socially acceptable constructions of religion. Many women hide from the public confession of their double burden and female breadwinning because of the perceived antinomies between confessing to and being known as the female breadwinner. Such women are even sometimes seen as harlots and prostitutes (asewo among the Yoruba people) and believed to be collecting the monies with which they are breadwinning from other richer men – sugar daddies (a socially derogatory concept/term for describing rich men dating women for pleasure) as women are never imagined to be financially self-sufficient and capable of providing familial lifelines as breadwinners but only as marginal family care supporters. Known and confessed female breadwinners are often seen as arrogant women who have bewitched their husbands to take their husbands’ glory and roles. Thus, such women have to remain silent and endure a double burden to save themselves from social stigma and save their marriages from disintegration (Liu and Chan, 1999; Payne and Wermeling, 2009).

Is it then a social crime to be a female breadwinner even when providing for your family in the face of real social change? The veneer of religion in silencing positive but unconventional family survival roles is particularly noteworthy. Women are the uncelebrated social martyrs for their families in the face of excruciating social and economic urban survival realities. Yet these categories of people are unnoticed in the patriarchal systems that weakly acknowledge women’s roles even in the face of real social change. The resignation of the women who believe that Only God can help demonstrates their hopelessness in social and legal justice systems in which they are invisible. Generally, it can be submitted that against the background of findings, female breadwinning is ultimately a recipe for violence and feminists, social problem scholars, family experts, policy-makers, African Studies and Developing Societies’ scholars must begin to pay closer attention to the situation as an emerging phenomenon in urban settings, especially in Africa, and many other developing societies, in order to capture the contours of the problematic.