Abstract
IT is, of course, no more possible to generalize about the African woman than it is about the women of Europe and still less Asiatic women. Notwithstanding the title of her book, Mrs. Leith-Ross makes no such elementary mistake. Sho gives her readers the rosults of a careful and detailed investigation of the position of women among the Ibo people of Nigeria; and even here, she is careful to discriminate. The specific problem with which she was concerned was the reaction of the Ibo woman to the changes which are taking place around her under European administration and owing to the contacts with white civilization. Mrs. Leith-Ross, whose acquaintance with the African is of long standing, directed her observations to femalo life and character in four different types of community: the isolated bush community, where traditional patterns have suffered little modification, or at least so it would appear; a semi-sophisticated rural community, in which certain ideas and movements are beginning to stir the surface, more especially in the women's societies and organizations, such as on a previous occasion gave rise to serious trouble; a town of some considerable size; and finally the commercial and administrative centre, in which society, both European and more especially African, is cosmopolitan or mixed.
African Women
A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria. By Sylvia Leith-Ross. Pp. 367+8 plates. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1939.) 15s. not.
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Anthropology and Archæology. Nature 144, 737 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144737a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144737a0