Spatial politics and gendered strategies: women traders and institutions in Oke Arin market, Lagos

Abstract

Markets in Lagos, as in other parts of Yorubaland, are discursively constructed as spaces where women are in charge, perhaps based on their numbers. However, this article on the spatial relationships between women traders, the state and market institutions at Oke Arin in Lagos points to women's subordination and reflects Doreen Massey's concept of gendered spaces. Massey explains that spaces are in themselves gendered and that they also reflect and affect how gender is constructed and enforced in a specific context. The study is based on a sample of eighty Lagos (Yoruba) women traders and uses a combination of surveys, in-depth interviews, observation and secondary data to examine gendered strategies for survival and accumulation. I argue that, contrary to the perceptions of powerful Lagos market women, Massey's ‘internal structures of domination and subordination’ are evident in spatial governance, ownership and access at Oke Arin. Therefore, in response to spatial politics and the dominating structures of market and government authorities, women traders devise strategies of resistance, sometimes pushing the boundaries of legality to secure their livelihoods.