Data is obscured from early on. Current research says that the original Yoruba social ordered offered more freedom for women to occupy political, religious and economic enterprises, but also contained the seeds of inequality. This allowed for an easy transition to Western sexist norms that have continued to be exacerbated to this day. (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v047/47.1okeke.html#FOOT2)
Government:
The Nigerian Government was modeled after US Government’s separation of powers, and they have separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Judicial system also mirrors the United States by having a Supreme Court as the highest court of the land. However, there are four different systems of laws, English Law, Common Law, Customary Law, and Sharia Law. In addition, much like the United States, Nigeria has state-level governments for its 36 states.
Their Constitution also allows International treaties to have the force of law if they are enacted into law by the National Assembly. This has been the basis for the main legislation on human and women’s rights, as Nigeria passed the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 1990. However, enforcement of the laws is a problem because the constitution splits human rights into civil and political and socio-economic divisions. While civil and political can be enforced in court, socio-economic are merely guidelines for the government to pursue but are not enforceable.
http://www.wunrn.com/news/2010/04_10/04_05_10/040510_nigeria.htm#_ftn15
Religion
The Northern part of Nigeria is primarily Muslim as of the last 50 years. The debate over women’s rights in the area has thus largely become an ideological battle of the origins of Women’s rights in Islam. The southern part of the Islamic regions holds it is not a tenant of Islam (Isa Wali article) but of the pre-Islamic culture of the region. There is hope however as the intense discussion around the tenants of Islam and the eventual unmasking of gender inequality as a local cultural tradition allowed women’s rights to press forward, eventually culminating in their right to vote. This debate continues but characterizes a significant theme.
The Northern part of Nigeria is primarily Muslim as of the last 50 years. The debate over women’s rights in the area has thus largely become an ideological battle of the origins of Women’s rights in Islam. The southern part of the Islamic regions holds it is not a tenant of Islam (Isa Wali article) but of the pre-Islamic culture of the region. There is hope however as the intense discussion around the tenants of Islam and the eventual unmasking of gender inequality as a local cultural tradition allowed women’s rights to press forward, eventually culminating in their right to vote. This debate continues but characterizes a significant theme.
Successes and Failures of implementation:
ReplyDeleteNigeria’s two level government is particularly useful because it can help show us the different results from different forms of implementations. A dual quantitative and qualitative comparison among the different states that have passed women’s laws was used to help look at how a number of different variables can affect both the enactment and implementation of women’s rights laws.
There were a number of interesting findings, one of the strongest findings was that an indigenous women’s movement is very important for the successful implementation of a women’s rights law. In addition, this movement should involve politically elite women in its leadership. The example they gave was Joy Ezeilo, the United Nations Rapporteour on Trafficking, who has helped implement numerous laws on violence against women in the southern states. She also highlights another helpful variable which is the use of international connections such NGOs and the United Nation. These NGOs have the ability to activate international media which can then shame the government into passing women’s laws. This was most recently seen in the passing of the federal Child Right’s Act and the federal trafficking law.
Another, suggestion was that proposals should be based on specific issues and not try to generalize all women’s rights into one law. This way the opposition cannot focus on a single contentious issue, such as abortion. Focusing on specific issues also allows you to focus on how that issue can fit into the traditional culture. In Northern Nigeria many of the states follow Sharia law and use this as an excuse to not pass women’s rights laws. However, Jigawa, a Sharia state, passed some of the most progressive women’s rights laws because of its partnership with NGOs and idea that sexism came from the pre-Islamic culture in the region not from Islam.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1657334
-CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women):
ReplyDeleteNigeria is only a signatory of this and did not ratify it so it is only bound to refrain from acts that would defeat CEDAW's purpose. However, since it did not ratify it Nigeria is not responsible for implementing provisions.
Role of Sharia Courts
- Islamic courts are recognized but they can be appealed to Nigeria's highest court
- "The coexistence of three legal systems...makes it difficult to adopt and enforce laws which genuinely affect women's rights."
- Islamic punishments violate many human rights
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/sjilc31&div=19&g_sent=1&collection=journals
Perceptions of Nigerian Women on Domestic violence
ReplyDeleteThis article examined how women themselves felt about wife beating and found some surprising results.
66.4% of evermarried women agree a man is justified in beating or hitting his wife, and 50.4% of unmarried women agree.
This agreement reinforces the idea of the weakness of women and propagates the sexual and economic inequalities that place women inferior to men.
The paper also breaks down the population surveyed by religious group, ethnicity, and wealth as well as other characteristics. Islamic women are more likely to think beating is okay, however it is still high among all other religious groups, the Hausa tribe is the most likely ethnic group, and as wealth increases less people are likely to agree with wife beating.
In addition the paper breaks down specific reasons for beating or hitting wives and asked if they agree that they deserved getting hit for that. These reasons were, in order of frequency that women agreed men are justified in beating women, if the woman goes out without telling him, neglects children, argues, refuses sex, and burns food.
Burning food was the least likely but was still a very high 30%.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3583461?seq=14
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
ReplyDeleteFunmilayo Ransome-Kuti (FRK) was one of the few educated elites that was able to combine her Western education and the shrewdness of the Nigerian masses in the most effective way to undermine the Western ideology of modernity-through-tradition.
Here’s some highlights of how she was able to accomplish so much. She:
-bridged the gap between the educated and uneducated.
-developed a strong sense of camaraderie in the movement
-was functional, but fun and encouraged bonding through enjoyment.
-dressed wearing traditional clothes and spoke only the local language.
-allowed the presence of playfulness in her organization to reanimat the fossilized practices of resistance influenced by the tradition-modernity ideology.
-adapted Western strategies to popular wisdom, and thus she was able to keep up the momentum of the struggle long after many Western-imitated organizations had failed.
-viewed her elitism as a problem, and questioned the traditions of her culture, but also her own modernity.
This process happened without specification of what was tradition and what was considered modernity: the emotional aspect of humanity was never separated from the rational one, the serious struggle against discrimination was never placed apart from enjoyment and camaraderie, etc.
http://www.africanphilosophy.com/issue2/brodnicka.html