Simi Afonja

Simi Afonja is a Nigerian sociologist and scholar of gender, women's studies and social change. She is associated with Obafemi Awolowo University, where she was a professor of sociology and a founding director of the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies Quotes Women experience numerous contradictions as they undergo social change. She argued that changes described as increasing women's autonomy could simultaneously create new burdens and inequalities. Change created a number of problems that supposed autonomy could not come to grips with. Afonja was arguing that social change did not automatically resolve the problems confronting Nigerian women. New forms of inequality could emerge alongside developments that appeared to increase women's autonomy. Women appeared to contribute more labor to the development Afonja was highlighting an imbalance in the distribution of labour. She argued that women's contribution to development could be greater than men's while women simultaneously carried significant physical and time burdens. ,Modernization created new resources and along with them, new kinds of inequalities in access to resources. Afonja was examining the contradictory effects of modernization. While modernization could create additional resources and opportunities, she argued that access to those resources was not distributed equally between women and men. Women had much more limited access to resources than men. She used this disparity to challenge the assumption that social change automatically produced equality. Category:Living people Category:Sociologists from Nigeria