BEYOND STEREOTYPES: GENDER AND POLITICS IN IRON SMELTING SOCIETY OF LEJJA, NIGERIA

There is general yet erroneous consensus that women are underrepresented in the fields of science and technology. The underrepresentation is assumed to be one of the causes of the imagined than real marginalization of women in social, economic and political spheres. As iron smelting has a lot to do with science and technology, this paper intends to debunk such views using Lejja, an ancient iron smelting community in Nigeria as a case study. To do this, attention was focused on the relationship between iron smelting and politics in the community. Gender-specific roles that depict power sharing and division of labor during smelting will be discussed. Questions to be answered include but are not limited to the role of women in the transfer and legitimizing of power from one village-head to the other, the implication of women of every lineage paying some respect to a diseased man of their lineage during the dance of Igede music and the nexus between such actions and iron smelting. Given that, it would help to correct wrong notions about iron smelting and power playing between both sexes and the role of women in the iron smelting industry.