TEXTILE PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN THE SOKOTO CALIPHATE

Men and women, trained in the occupations of spinner, weaver, dyer, ta ilor and embroiderer, manufactured the renowned textile products of th e Sokoto Caliphate, a nineteenth-century state in the central Sudan re gion of West Africa. The numerical distributions of men and women with in these occupations were uneven, but not in accordance with the patte rn described most frequently in the literature. Offered here is anothe r, more detailed view of textile production. Women were not simply spi nners but were also weavers and dyers. Uneven, too, were the geographi cal distributions of men and women workers. Men skilled in textile man ufacturing were widely disseminated throughout the caliphate, as were women spinners; women skilled at weaving and dyeing, however, were con centrated mainly in the southern emirates of Nupe and Ilorin. Similarl y, male entrepreneurs organized large-scale textile manufacturing ente rprises in the north-central portion of the caliphate while enterprise s created by women were located to the south. New sources, the textile products of the caliphate, along with other contemporary evidence, re veal that women's work was more varied, more prominent, more highly sk illed and more organized than previously thought. Comparative analyses along gender lines show that men's work and women's work were similar in the degree of training required and the levels of skill achieved. Labor, especially skilled labor, was critical to textile production if the caliphate was to maintain its external markets. But there were su bstantial differences in the degree to which men and women could mobil ize and organize labor. A variety of social and political factors in c aliphate society combined to assist men and hinder women in the organi zation and management of textile manufacturing.