The Transactional Woman: Exploring the Intersection of Sex, Patriarchy, and Materialism in Nigeria
In Shallipopi’s track “Cast,” featuring Odumodu Blvck, there’s a derogatory line that attempts to speak on relationships in Nigeria: “If she no fuck oh, if she no suck / Who go pay for her wig and handbag? (None).” This demeaning lyric lays bare certain realities in an environment where economic realities, patriarchal structures and materialist aspirations seem to intersect frequently. Transactional sex and relationships have, to an extent, become embedded in some corners of Nigerian society.
While both men and women engage in relationships for material benefit, it does seem that women disproportionately do so. This is because Nigerian society provides a fertile ground for this dynamic, by routinely commodifying women and tying their value to men. Worse of all, Women face systemic barriers to economic independence, from unequal access to wealth and land to a broader exclusion from opportunities. This inequity forces many into survival driven relationships, where the promise of financial support often becomes a lifeline.
But transactional sex isn’t just built upon survival. For some, it’s about desire. Material aspirations have turned hypergamy (marrying or dating “up”) into an ambition, even when survival isn’t on the line – although often veiled into rhetoric as a feminist choice. For some, relationships are no longer just about romantic connection; they also function as a currency exchange; where wigs, handbags, and money take precedence. Ironically, the same culture that vilifies women for seeking financial benefits rewards men for flaunting their ability to provide it since financial dominance is linked to masculinity while all in all women are reduced to opportunists.
Transactional Sex
Okonkwo describes transactional sex “as various non-professional and intermittent exchanges of sex for indeterminate amounts of money and/or consumerist gifts” As some academics have noted, “transactional sex, however, differs from prostitution in important ways: participants are constructed as ‘girlfriends’ and ‘boyfriends’ and not ‘prostitutes’ and ‘clients,’ and the exchange of gifts for sex is part of a broader set of obligations that might not involve a predetermined payment.”
It’s worth noting that the women who engage in these relationships do not self-identify as prostitutes. Instead, they view themselves as resourceful, leveraging their relationships with men to secure what they want. Okonkwo explains that women who participate in transactional sex “do not often pre-negotiate the monetary and material costs of sexual acts required by sugar daddies before the acts. This is because transactional sex relationships are built on gendered roles, expectations, and responsibilities.” Which highlights the very nature of transactional relationships within Nigeria. Whereby the entrenched patriarchal attitudes hinge on the notion that a man should and is the economic provider, whilst the woman is the disempowered recipient or beneficiary.
The concept of "transactional sex" is by no means exclusive to Nigeria. Across the globe, women engage in similar arrangements, leveraging relationships as a means of accessing resources or status. However, in the Global North, this phenomenon tends to be less pronounced, largely due to cultural and systemic differences. In these regions, stronger social safety nets, broader economic opportunities for women and progressive gender policies reduce the need for such dependency. Women in the Global North are more likely to benefit from frameworks that promote financial independence and are more exposed to narratives that tend to celebrate and encourage women’s liberation and agency.
Social Economic and Political Factors
When examining the nature of transactional sex and relationships in Nigeria, it is crucial to consider the broader socio-economic, political, and cultural factors that have stifled women’s progress. Politically, women remain underrepresented and silenced. As of February 2024, women only occupy 3.9% of seats in the House of Senate. They continue to face systemic exclusion from power and decision-making spaces with their voices drowned out in a political system dominated by men.
This not only keeps women out of spaces where key societal decisions are decided, but also reinforces a structure where they are dependent on men for access to resources, influence, and autonomy. The lack of women’s participation in politics highlights systemic inequities feeding into the normalisation of transactional relationships as a means of navigating an inherently unequal society.
Additionally, despite accounting for nearly half of the labour force, women disproportionately represent a significant share of the country’s impoverished population continuing a cycle of economic dependence. As sociologist Judith Stacey explains, patriarchy is “a system of social stratification and differentiation based on sex, which provides material advantages to males while simultaneously placing severe constraints on the roles and activities of females.”
Colonialism, Capitalism and Patriarchy in Nigeria
Through colonialism, Nigeria adopted the Western idea of patriarchy and capitalism. The Colonial rule dismantled pre-existing systems and imposed structures that prioritised capitalist and patriarchal values. These two systems, inherently exploitative and interdependent, reinforced unequal power dynamics by assigning value to men and women based on socially constructed gender roles. (Okonkwo)
Colonial administrators leveraged the differences between men and women in Nigeria to construct and implement policies governing participation in society's public and private realms. Such policies curtailed women’s economic participation and relegated them to the domestic sphere. The colonial rulers also introduced a dual education system, which ensured and institutionalised gender structures. Men were groomed for roles within the colonial administration and industries whilst women were funnelled into domestic training.
Men typically are involved with monetised, productive labour, while women are confined to unpaid, reproductive work, underpinning their subordinate position in society. Capitalism not only relies on these patriarchal norms but actively perpetuates them to maintain systems that disadvantage women. This manifests in persistent inconsistencies such as unequal access to education, employment, and disparities in wages. Okonkwo expresses “the patriarchal gendered rules and expectations of everyday life seep into capitalist workplaces to reinforce workers’ covert and overt assumptions about the suitability and capacity of each sex to perform monetized productive and non-monetary reproductive work.”
These capitalist arrangements consolidated patriarchy in Nigeria, as they promoted male economic privilege and disenfranchised women. With a large proportion of women relying on men, be that relatives or lovers, for access to resources. As captured by Omodjhowoefe, “the role men play became, not only valued, but also prestigious. In contrast, little prestige and values was given to ordinary routine, taken for granted activities of women. This marked the genesis of female minority status in society”
Life in Contemporary Nigeria
For many life in Nigeria is an unrelenting cycle of hardship. The country is entrenched in corruption and inequalities, characterising society into two extremes: the haves and the have-nots. With 70% of the population living in poverty, the wealth gap is undeniable, and its consequences are devastating. Among the wealthy elite—many of whom cannot trace their fortunes to legitimate sources, there is a brazen indifference to the suffering of the masses. Shielded by their privilege and emboldened by the very system that benefits them, they remain apathetic to the inequalities they encounter daily. As Latour observed, “Capitalism … generates for most of the people who don’t benefit from its wealth, a feeling of helplessness, and for a few people who benefit from it, an immense enthusiasm together with a dumbness of the senses.”
This societal imbalance is further exacerbated by structural failures that leave millions of Nigerians without basic necessities. Inadequate healthcare, poor infrastructure, widespread unemployment, substandard housing, and failing education systems. Even religion a cornerstone of Nigerian life is paradoxically exploited to reinforce existing inequities.
Yet, despite this backdrop, Nigeria remains a materialistic and superficial society. The desire for wealth and status is rife, and capitalism’s consumer driven culture has given rise to an insatiable pursuit of material goods. But in a country where legitimate means of upward mobility are scarce, many feel compelled to seek questionable alternatives, to attain even a semblance of prosperity that they aspire to. This aspiration is further supported by religious institutions, which disingenuously champion the ideals of wealth and success, through constant prosperity preaching.
For women, these challenges are magnified by systemic gender inequalities. The combined pressures of poverty, consumerism, and patriarchy have given rise to transactional sex and hypergamous relationships as strategies for survival and upward social and economic mobility. Nigeria’s stratified society places immense value on wealth and status as a necessity for respectability and influence. It’s a society where appearances matter greatly and being seen as affluent can open doors to better treatment, greater opportunities, and social merit. For many women, aligning themselves with men and or sugar daddies who can provide such, becomes a logical way to navigate a system that from the outset often denies them economic independence. Thus by potentially leveraging these partnerships, women can climb the social ladder and secure their places in elite circles, that they would have never had access to.
However, this culture is symptomatic of societal failings, which doesn’t just push women and men toward transactional relationships it normalises them. These practices are fixed in a culture that worships wealth in turn, commodifying relationships as a feasible avenue for economic exchanges. At its core, this reflects the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy, where women’s economic dependency is both a symptom and a tool of structural oppression.
The effects of this phenomenon continuously shape how gender is perceived and navigated within Nigerian society. Men, emboldened by patriarchal privilege, often view women as objects or assets to be acquired and controlled, physically and financially. While some women, constrained by economic precarity, are compelled to leverage their relationships with men as a means of navigating their society. This also means valuing men based on their financial capacities, as opposed to their character and values – which is not only shallow but potentially dangerous. All in all, these dynamics reflect a system that leaves little room for genuinity in all aspects of Nigerian life.
Materialism
While transactional sex and relationships can be attributed to the harsh socioeconomic realities that disproportionately affect women. It would be reductive to frame these dynamics solely as a response to financial desperation. For some women, material aspirations not just survival take priority. These women are “knowledgeable social agents” they enter transactional relationships with a clear understanding of the benefits seeking to attain material comforts and a social standing they cannot independently achieve.
Smith states “ Many unmarried women clearly viewed their sexuality as a positive resource, not as something that demeaned them. In a society where nearly, everyone faces significant obstacles to attaining their social and economic goals, women’s sexual agency offers numerous desired benefits, including opportunities to continue higher education, access to employment, and the ability to help kin. Indeed, the young women who are most likely to be married men’s partners in sugar daddy relationships are not the poorest of the poor, trading sex for economic help because of abject poverty, but rather a more educated and fashionable group who are more disposed to see themselves as agentive”
It is well documented that these relationships begin alarmingly early on, from when young women enter university, lacking financial support, some turn to exploitative older men for financial backing. Arenyeka et al. (2014) highlights that female university students often engage in transactional relationships to acquire goods that signify modernity and contribute to their identity formation.
Smith writes:
“I heard many young Nigerian women allude to having more than one sugar daddy, each of whom might be encouraged to play a different role economically - a fact underscored by the playful use of the terms Commissioner of Education, Commissioner of Transportation, Commissioner of Housing, and Commissioner of Finance to describe a particular man’s contribution.”
There’s an implicit understanding that granting romantic or sexual access comes with economic benefits, in the form of allowances, money and gifts. This expectation is so rife that it pretty much characterises dating and relationships in Nigeria, making material exchanges an almost normalised aspect of modern day Nigerian romance.
Yet this phenomenon cannot be viewed in isolation from its broader societal and global context. In a consumerist world, materialism and luxury is constantly marketed as the ultimate life goal. The rise of social media has only amplified these ideals, turning platforms into engines for promoting aesthetics centred on wealth and exclusivity. Trends like “Quiet Luxury” and “Soft life” has transformed wealth into an identity, where the performance of wealth is as important as its possessions.
But where the average monthly income hovers around 30,000 naira (approximately $40), these ideals collide with economic struggles. So, for some women navigating these constraints and aligning with these aspirations may mean resorting to using their sexuality to secure material desires. This lays bare the intersections of economic inequality, materialism and rigid gender norms.
Socially, discussions around "dating men for money," "dating men with money," or "dating men who can take care of me" are omnipresent, repeated endlessly through personal networks, social media debates, Nollywood films, and podcasts. These conversations, albeit, presented as entertainment, just bolster transactional relationships as a norm and do very little to challenge them.
Nollywood, an influential cultural powerhouse, has also been a longstanding offender in cementing these ideals. Films, particularly from the early 2000s, reduced women to one dimensional characters, whose worth was tied to their sexuality or marital status. Female protagonists were rarely depicted as professionals or equal to their male counterparts. Instead, storylines often cast them as adversaries competing for the attention and resources of wealthy men. These portrayals, while dramatic, normalised transactional relationships and patriarchal hierarchies to this very day continue to shape public attitudes.
Final Thoughts
The normalisation of transactional sex and relationships is indeed contributing to the erosion of gender relations in Nigeria. While some women have framed it as a feminist choice, this interpretation is flawed. True feminist choices empower women, creating pathways to independence and equality, not reducing their interactions with men to skewed exchanges of romance coupled with financial gain. As these dynamics become increasingly normalised, their consequences grow more troubling: a continued degradation of women’s value in both public and private spaces.
Among men, this culture has become a fertile ground for the rise of incel and manosphere ideologies—movements rooted in resentment and misogyny that flourish both online and offline. These spaces are often populated by men who feel excluded from certain women, particularly those who prioritise financial stability or luxury in their relationships. This perceived exclusion stokes feelings of inadequacy and rejection, which are then weaponised into grievances against women as a whole.
In a society already steeped in misogynistic norms, these men find validation for their frustrations, emboldening them to spew vitriol. Often framing women as manipulative, transactional, or unworthy of respect. The result is a dangerous feedback loop where personal insecurities are magnified into collective hostility, entrenching societal misogyny further.
Rather than addressing the underlying systemic issues, economic inequality, rigid gender roles, and a culture that equates wealth with value, these ideologies offer a simplistic, harmful scapegoat: women themselves.
As previously discussed, the intersection of patriarchy and capitalism underpins Nigeria’s culture of transactional sex and relationships. The country’s growing materialistic attitude, driven by a capitalist narrative, has created an environment where women without independent access to resources may use sex to secure them - whether as a response to sheer survival or the desire for luxury. Nevertheless, it is critical to recognise that the primary driver of this behaviour is a system and culture that perpetuates these inequities, one that must be interrogated and dismantled if true progress is to be made. Without such critical interventions, the transactional nature of gender relations will persist, perpetuating cycles of exploitation and inequity in a society that can ill afford either.
