Abeokuta Women's Union

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The Abeokuta Women's Union (AWU) is a women's organization in March 1946 in Abeokuta ( Nigeria was founded).

history

The AWU emerged from the Abeokuta Ladies Club, an association founded in the early 1930s by the later women's rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti , which was committed to educational goals and organized literacy courses for women from the lower classes in addition to handicrafts. In the course of the decade, the association became more and more politicized when it came into conflict with Alake (King) Ademola II of Egba , who was protected by the British colonial power and who wanted to enforce taxation measures by the colonial government at the expense of the women of Abeokutas and Egba . From 1940 on, the Abeokuta Ladies Club repeatedly organized mass demonstrations against the Alake and the British colonial power, in which tens of thousands of women took part.

In March 1946 the Abeokuta Ladies Club was reorganized and now revealed its political character by renaming it to "Abeokuta Women's Union". The AWU, whose chairmanship continued to be led by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti ( Eniola Soyinka , the mother of the later Nobel Prize winner for literature, Wole Soyinka, was elected as General Secretary ), accepted both individuals and organizations and had a degree of mobilization of around 100,000 women. The AWU's motto was: "Unity, cooperation, selfless service and democracy". The AWU experienced its greatest triumph when its agitation forced the Alake to resign in January 1949. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti then strived to unite all women's organizations in Nigeria and so in May 1950 the AWU was merged into the newly established Nigerian Women's Union (NWU). The AWU remained independent under this umbrella organization as the executive committee of the NWU in Abeokuta.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. March 14, 2016, Retrieved January 1, 2019 (American English). 
2. ↑ Alaba Onajin, Obioma Ofoego: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti: and the Women's Union of Abeokuta . 2014, ISBN 978-92-3100056-0 , pp. 52 (English).