Family, Marriage and Divorce: Difficult Balances and Tensions Behind the Integration of a Traditional Society

The aim of this article is to show how a 'traditional' society may produce a household system in which the structural tensions are no less intense than in the Western world. Muslim Hausa society (in northern Nigeria) has one of the highest rates of divorce (and remarriage) in the world. An explanation is sought here in terms of the economic and organisational requirements of a subsistence farming system that is always potentially short of labour. Divorce is a solution to otherwise unacceptable pressures, particularly on young women, in a society that requires them to be subordinate and marginal within the extended family. The data presented here were collected between 1979 and 1989 in the Niger valley of Sokoto State in northern Nigeria.