Abstract
Gender equality consciousness is one of the defining issues of Nigeria's modernity. It transcends the democratization of the family to shape 'women's inheritance rights and political participation. I mean the kind of gender transformation where, during the immediate aftermath of World War II, when labor movements became ubiquitous in colonial Nigeria, thousands of striking male workers demanded "wage increases and even family allowance based on their status as breadwinners…survived…in large measure because of the economic independence of their wives and the importance of market women to local economies." Unknown to many scholars, the origins of these significant developments are deeply rooted in the intersection of colonial laws—as well as legally provoked agitations—with gendered racism in colonial Nigeria. The paper aims to draw from the case of the eastern region to demonstrate how these ensuing changes constructed a stronger alternative that was remarkable in establishing more egalitarian relations between women and men in modern Nigeria. However, I argue that this gender transformation constituted part of the unintended benefits of European colonization of Africa because Britain primarily initiated the laws to ensure the peaceful co-existence needed for maximum colonial exploitation.