Every organisation in this field rations, and almost none of them publish how. That silence is not neutral: it means the reasoning is never examined, and a woman who is turned down is left to conclude she was not…
A woman moves into a compound to get away from somebody. Everything has been arranged — the lawyer, the school, the order from the court. Then a man arrives at the gate, says he is her husband and that…
Formal services reach a fraction of the women who need them. Markets reach almost everybody. A market association knows who has stopped coming, whose husband collects her takings, who arrived with a swollen face and said she fell. It…
You have known him since university. He was at your wedding. He lent you money once without being asked. And now his wife has told you something, or you have seen something, and you cannot make the two versions…
She tells you he threw her phone at the wall, that he does not let her see her sister, that she has to account for every naira. And then she tells you every marriage has its problems, that he…
Tell him I was with you. Say you have not heard from me. If he calls, say I am at the shop. Most people helping somebody in this situation are asked for something like this eventually, usually at short…
Two fears sit on either side of this. That telling an employer will cost you the job, and that not telling them means nothing can be arranged when you need a morning for court. Both are reasonable. The answer…
Six or eight months in, when the practical things are working and the worst is over, a great many women describe the same experience: a week where they cannot function, for no reason they can identify, having been fine…
Leaving a marriage in Nigeria is rarely a matter between two people. Within days there is a delegation, or a series of calls, or elders arriving at your parents' house, and the process of bringing you back begins in…
One of the more predictable things about this work is that a woman arrives needing help with housing, money and a lawyer, and turns out to have a health problem she has been carrying for years. Not an injury…
