Taking as case study the city of Ibadan, in south-west Nigeria, at the end of the colonial period (1947-1957), the author focuses on the analysis of women’s collective mobilizations. They represent a privileged point of view to study the kind of organisation Nigerian women gave themselves in order to negotiate greater independence in both the socio-economic and political spheres. The author draws attention more specifically to the complexity of these negotiations when they involved calling into question the gender attributions of that period, namely the concept of femininity, based on the social role of housewives, mothers and wives. The study of women’s strategies and speeches shows the fields where they were able to overcome difficulties and acquire the desired visibility and the fields where they had to bend to social rules still too deeply rooted to be overthrown.