#gender-across-cultures

¶ Was gender always the organising category? Oyěwùmí and the Yoruba argument

I keep returning to a book that divides everyone I discuss it with: Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí's The Invention of Women (1997). Her claim is that in precolonial Yoruba society, the primary principle of social organisation was not gender but seniority, relative age. She…