Interview with Hajiya Binta Abdulhamid

The Global Feminisms Project (umich.edu) is a collaborative international oral history project that examines the history of feminist activism, women's movements, and academic women's studies in sites around the world. The current archive includes interviews with women's movement activists and women's studies scholars in China, India, Nicaragua, Poland, and the United States. We are currently working on adding interviews from Brazil and Russia. The Project is based in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at UM, which is also the home for the U.S. site research team. Our international collaborators include: - Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem - UFF (the Laboratory of Oral History and Images at the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro) and Núcleo de História, Memória e Documento - NUMEM (the Center for History, Memory, and Documentation at the Federal State University in Rio de Janeiro), BRAZIL - China Women's University in Beijing, CHINA - SPARROW, Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women in Mumbai, INDIA - Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres de Nicaragua (Autonomous Women's Movement), NICARAGUA - Fundacja Kobiet eFKa (Women's Foundation eFKa) in Krakow, POLAND Hajiya Binta Abdulhamid was born on March 20, 1965, in Kano, the capital of Kano State, in northern Nigeria. She attended primary school and girls' secondary school in Kano and Kaduna State. Thereafter she attended classes at Bayero University in Kano, where she received a degree in Islamic Studies. While she initially wanted to be a journalist, in 1983 she was encouraged to take education courses at the tertiary level in order to serve as a principal in girls' secondary schools in Kano State. While other women had served in this position, there has been no women from Kano State who had done so. She has subsequently worked under the Kano State Ministry of Education, serving as school principal in several girls' secondary schools in Kano State. Her experiences as a principal and teacher in these schools has enabled her to support girl child education in the state and she has encouraged women students to complete their secondary school education and to continue on to postgraduate education. She sees herself as a woman-activist in her advocacy of women's education and has been gratified to see many of her former students working as medical doctors, lawyers, and politicians.