orth. Further complicating social hierarchies are the Shona's "clan" system, where one man is the head of the family and thus the closest to a chief there is, and the rest of the men and their wives are subservient to him. In kind, each man is superior to his wives, of which he can have many. However, Colonial administrators and Christian missionaries introduced the assumptions of European patriarchy into African society. The patriarchal assumption that women belonged in the home, engaged in child rearing and other domestic chores. The colonizers expected African societies to consider women as subordinate to men because Europeans considered women subordinate to men. In pre-colonial indigenous Nigerian societies, for example, a woman's role included providing for her family by means of financial support; therefore, her traditional responsibility required her financial independence. Colonial authorities thought that if a woman obtained financial independence she might not give her husband and his family their entitled respect, and the restrictions that colonial governments placed on women changed the position of women in indigenous societies. Colonialism disrupted the traditional system of production in indigenous Nigerian societies, reinforcing the existing systems of social inequality and introducing oppressive forms of social stratific
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