Women in Nso' today must meet the increased demands of underwriting male participation in a new context, in which land and labour have become commodified, and in which men's obligations to accumulate symbolic capital have become, if anything, more costly and complex. At the same time, new opportunities have emerged for women that may lead to marriage decisions that they - and men - perceive as acts of resistance to traditional expectations. A woman's marriage strategy both reflects her family's position in a context of increased stratification, and, ultimately, contributes to new forms of stratification.

'Traditional' views of gender persist largely unchanged in present day Nso'. 'Farm-food-female' continues to be a gender marker while the axiom, amounting almost to a prescription, that 'men own the fields, women own the crops' remains central in the dominant discourse. The pattern whereby women's productive and reproductive labour forms the basis of male accumulation continues today. Women still have the social obligation to provision the household, while men still control most productive resources and long-distance trade networks. Women work longer and harder today in order to fulfil new demands for cash. The privatization of land has undermined their formerly guaranteed access to lineage land. They have lost the right they had in the past to lend out land, and can be evicted from the land if they fail to pay bribes or if their conduct is interpreted as unseemly. Yet at the same time, education and job opportunities have opened up new visions and new opportunities for some women.

The contemporary household, with its gendered division of labour, remains the basic unit of production (Goheen 1984 and 1990). Men earn cash in the formal wage/salary sector and in entrepreneurial activities. Much male time is spent in status-oriented activities, in networking at the palace and men's sodalities, and socializing in mimbo houses. Men work in the market sector and women in the subsistence sector of the economy, and rarely combine time and resources to maximize the output of the household.

Virtually all women are farmers; even the most successful women entrepreneurs and wives of wealthy men are expected to farm. However, the perception that women own the crops, but not the land, has effectively excluded them from participation in more lucrative development programs. Female farmers in Nso' have only a limited marketable output and little time to increase production for investment. Yet women contribute one-quarter of actual cash expenditures. Virtually all of a woman's cash income is spent on household items and children's education, while, unencumbered by the necessities of daily domestic provision, men's income is freed for investment and other opportunities outside the domestic unit.

Access to credit is similarly gendered. Officially, credit is available to both men and women through formal institutions such as banks and the national agricultural development fund. In practice, these institutions serve a restricted clientele, namely large-scale farmers and civil servants, while small-scale farmers, especially women, do not receive credit. There are credit unions which make credit more easily available to small farmers, but for a variety of reasons these are more accessible to men than to women. Virtually no women whose husbands do not belong to credit unions are themselves members. Women borrow money in emergencies, when they cannot get money from their husbands. They believe, with good reason, that if they belong to a credit union, their husbands will put pressure on them to borrow money rather than contribute to expenses themselves.

The rotating savings and credit associations, termed njangis, represent the most common source of credit for women. Members put in money on a regular basis. Each member 'cooks' the njangi in turn so that a substantial sum is available for investment for each member. The advantage of these groups is that they are based on ongoing social relationships and trust. Often if a member needs a loan for an emergency, interest will not be charged if the loan is repaid within what is perceived to be a 'reasonable time.' The njangis give women access to credit for 'crisis' situations and facilitate their ability to pay household expenses. They do not often provide capital for accumulation and growth.

A number of women are involved in petty trading although few are able to turn this into a lucrative business. Most women get the start-up capital from their husbands and profits are small. Many women in petty trade avoid full-time farming, and, instead use their profits to pay others to work on their farms. Few act as substantial middle-level food traders or travel very far to trade. They are precluded from doing so both by their family responsibilities and by the pervasive idea that women should remain close to home, since 'too much travelling up and down [by women] always brings trouble.' For the majority of women entrepreneurial activities allow for maintenance rather than accumulation. Most have neither time nor credit to allow them to pursue capital-producing endeavours.