In what ways did the lives of women in Africa change with the arrival of colonial empires?

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The Answer is •Before colonization,women almost everywhere in Africa were active farmers,with responsibility for planting,weeding,and harvesting in addition to food preparation and child care.Women were expected to feed their own families and often were allocated their own fields for that purpose,and many were also involved in local trading activity.Though clearly subordinate to men,African women nevertheless had a measure of economic autonomy.
•Following colonization,women's lives diverged more and more from those of men.Women assumed near total responsibility for subsistence production,while men dominated cash-crop agriculture.
•Men increasingly migrated to the cities,leaving management of the domestic economy to their wives,who often took on traditionally male tasks.The lives and cultures of men and women increasingly diverged,with one focused on the cities and working for wages and the other on village life and subsistence agriculture.
•In response to these changing circumstances,women sought closer relations with their birth families,introduced labor-saving crops,adopted new farm implements,and earned money as traders.In the cities,they established a variety of self-help associations.
•Colonial economies sometimes offered women opportunities,particularly in small-scale trade and marketing,which could give them considerable economic autonomy.
•Colonial society often made women nearly independent heads of households;others took advantage of new opportunities in mission schools,towns,and mines to flee the restrictions of rural patriarchy.

In What Ways Did the Lives of Women in Africa