Engaging with feminist and post-colonial theories to examine the ways in which gender identity, gender power, and gender relations are enacted, this dissertation examines a shift that has recently been occurring in the education of rural Hausa girls, whose families are increasingly sending them to residential Qur'anic schools in metropolitan Sokoto rather than to government schools. At the root of this change, it identifies Hausa parents' desire to entrench traditional gender roles grounded in the cultural values and principles of Islamic religious ideology. To fulfill this aim, however, these parents must disrupt another aspect of the existing system of traditional gender roles, in which girls disproportionately farm and perform household duties. Moreover, it identifies the driving force of such disruption as Hausa fathers, who as the major decision-makers in their households are often making these schooling choices on their daughters' behalf in the face of sharp opposition from their wives. As a result, Hausa mothers must adjust to the loss of a major source of household labor, among other effects of the absence of their daughters from their homes. In other words, families lose their daughters' labor contributions when they leave their rural communities to go to Qur'anic schools in urban centers like Sokoto. The dissertation concludes by drawing the attention of the Nigerian government to its new data on the cultural and religious issues that should be considered by policymakers seeking to bring free universal primary and secondary education to under-served rural Hausa children and families in Northern Nigeria.
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