Patriarchal Restrictions and Maternal Manoeuvres:Igbo Women’s Quest for Land Inheritance Rights

Abstract

We examine the nature of maternal manoeuvres practised by Igbo women of Nigeria in negotiating access to resources under the traditional restrictive customary system and the contemporary plural legal framework. While extant feminist scholarship on African patriarchy often highlights discrimination and violations of women’s property rights, it rarely acknowledges the subtle strategies women use to navigate male-dominated societies, especially regarding land rights and inheritance. Among the Igbo, women have instrumentalized certain practices that uphold the patriarchal system for land access, inheritance, and succession. While employing a mix of socio-legal and discourse analysis and collaborative autoethnography, our study explores the traditional phase of silent politics of access, including practices like the female husband or woman-to-woman marriage, traditional single parenthood (nrachi), levirate marriage (nkuchi), and concubinage. We also delve into the modern phase, where women use Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs), child adoption, litigation, and legal instruments for property access. Our findings show that despite patriarchal biases in land rights, women navigate and assert their resource access using both traditional and modern methods.