Abeokuta’s Women Protest Unfair Taxes

In 1918, British colonial authorities in Abeokuta introduced a direct tax on local women that applied to girls as young as fifteen, earlier than the starting age for men. Traditional authorities enforcing colonial indirect rule collected additional duties, including market fees paid to native supervisors. Tax agents subjected residents to aggressive enforcement, sometimes stripping women under the pretext of checking their ages and imprisoning those unable to pay. Because women lacked political representation within the native administration, these fiscal burdens generated mounting anger across the city over the course of three decades.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a prominent local educator who had attended the Abeokuta Grammar School and studied in England, originally helped found the Abeokuta Ladies Club in 1932 as a middle-class civic group. After setting up literacy classes for illiterate market vendors, she learned firsthand about the steep economic and political inequities confronting working women. Seeking broader solidarity across social divides, Ransome-Kuti and Grace Eniola Soyinka reorganized the group in 1946 as the Abeokuta Women's Union, welcoming all local women and conducting meetings in Yoruba while wearing traditional dress.