Abstract
With the exponential growth of scholarship on women’s studies in recent decades, the nuances of power and powerlessness of women in religion, politics, and other decision-making processes have centered on women in Third World societies. Olutoyin Mejiuni’s book furthers our understanding of the complexities and challenges surrounding the acquisition of power by women in Third World societies such as Nigeria, a society imbued with patriarchal values and religious fundamentalism that disempower women. The book is a must-read for professors, researchers, practitioners, students, and policymakers in the field of sociology, politics, interdisciplinary studies, and women/gender development studies.
Mejiuni’s ambitious and comprehensive research study interrogates the critical problems of structural and gender inequalities and how they complicate notions of education, religion, and power that shape the identity of the Nigerian woman in the age of globalization. She empowers the reader with compelling empirical evidence on the pervasiveness of gender inequality by documenting the personal lived experiences of literate, semiliterate, and illiterate women and the ways in which a deeply entrenched patriarchy thwarts their pursuit of power and subverts the value they place in their work as wives and breadwinners.
What gives this book its definitive edge is sound research and methodology. Through in-depth analysis of interviews conducted with 183 women and 61 men of various persuasions and backgrounds in addition to religious leaders’ meeting transcripts, audio and video recordings, she expands our knowledge of the sociological, cultural, political, and socioeconomic factors that shape the identity of Nigerian women. Mejiuni’s research methods counter the culture of silence by giving voice to Nigerian women and male sympathizers in Ibadan and Lokoja. Through this lens, the book examines the low social status of women within the civic-political, domestic, and public domains while addressing the interlocking and systemic barriers that oppress women.
Mejiuni’s penetrating analysis of the multiple forces at work against women in Nigeria is underscored in the book’s Foreword where Cranton notes that as a Westerner, “This book is difficult and sometimes brutal to read; I did not want these things to be true, I did not know what could be done, or how things could or would change” (p. xvii). Her statements resonate in chapter 5, perhaps the most important chapter on power relations and women’s experience of violence. Respondents indicated a prevalence of violence that is upsetting and unacceptable. While 25% of literate women and nearly 50% of semiliterate women reported that they had been victims of violence or knew others who had been, another 17.4% of students sampled from tertiary institutions indicated that they had experienced abuse or knew someone who had experienced abuse (battery, rape, sexual harassment, etc.). With these rates of abuse, despite improvements in the education of women, the autonomy and well-being of Nigerian women is threatened.
In chapter 6, the author portrays the ambivalence among the women to grasp the empowering effect of formal education against the backdrop of Islam and Christianity. Some doubt their own capabilities for leadership. Others join the men and share a normative, traditional, and religious perception of women as primarily domestic and maternal functions even in the context of educational achievements. In chapter 7, Mejiuni provides copious examples of practices in the socialization process that devalue girls and breed feelings of inferiority. In overt and hidden ways, sexism is normalized at multiple academic levels; this is evident in classrooms where sexual harassment, gender hierarchies, and funneling female students into domestic careers are prevalent.
As an indigene to the region, I can say that Mejiuni’s research promises to be influential in policy development to promote more equitable and gender-sensitive structural changes. It adds immeasurably to the small but growing pool of sociocultural data on the gender dialectic and the identity and identity politics of women in Nigeria in their daily struggles against repression. The author is short on recommendations and on cultural data such as polygamy and the role of polygamy in contributing to the low social status of women. Additionally, it may have helped the reader to know whether the literate or semiliterate married female respondents were in a polygamous relationship, and to what extent that affected their low status or in the shaping of their identity.
In sum, there is the need to create and sustain civil society movements in which women try to attain power balances, seek recognition, and forge solidarities by embracing the politics of each other’s experiences against the overarching stronghold of monotheistic religions, as well as patriarchy. The knowledge Mejiuni has generated provides an essential arsenal in the struggles of Nigerian women for the change that must come. Mejiuni’s critical reflections represent a new vision of hope to affirm women’s contributions in politics, education, religion, and traditional roles as wives and mothers.