SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: Igbo, African & Chinese Studies

CONTRIBUTORS:

Ephraim-Chukwu, C. Anthonia
Okodo, AI

ABSTRACT:

This work studies gynaegamy in Igbo land: A study of marital sustenance of family patriline among Awgu people. Many people have misconstrued the Igbo people’s woman marriage as gay marriage; this has made this phenomenon generate controversy. This is why the researcher developed interest in this observance and investigated it. Now that Igbo culture is threatened, the researcher wanted to have Awgu version of woman marriage recorded in order to clear the misconceptions about gynaegamy in Igbo land. This study is a qualitative research design carried out in Awgu of Enugu State, Nigeria. The area of study is marriage. The population of the study is the entire people of Awgu. Simple random sampling was employed to select the people interviewed from each village in Awgu. Data for this study were collected through oral interviews and observation. Also many books relating to this work were reviewed to see what scholars have said about woman marriage. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory and Functionalist Theory were employed in analyzing the data collected to prove that Awgu women who are childless are motivated to observe this practice because they needed to be safe in their marriage and to safeguard the non-extinction of their husband’s lineage. At the end of the analysis, the work found out that the relationship that exists between the major woman and the minor woman is like mother-daughter relationship which is devoid of sexual desires.It was also discovered that there are four major reasons why gynaegamy is recommended for childless and sonless couples in Awgu. The reasons are social, economic, religious and political reasons.Now that Adoption and In-Vitro Fertilization is trending the study recommended them as alternatives to woman marriage to avoid the problems that are inherent in gynaegamous marriage.