Locating gender and women’s studies in Nigeria: What trajectories for the future?

Charmaine Pereira
75B Mississippi Street,
Maitama,
Abuja,
Nigeria.
Email: cepereira_1999@yahoo.com

Abstract

One of the major impacts of women’s movements on the academy, in Africa and in the West, is the emergence of women’s studies as a field of teaching, research and scholarly endeavour. Within women’s studies, the realities of women’s lives, their history and experience, the content of their lives have all become the focus of investigation, research and intellectual discourse. The importance of women’s studies lies in its attempts not only to make the different strata of women more visible in academic discourse but also to understand how and why it is that they have been marginalized in the first place. The overlapping field of gender studies includes a wide spectrum of work, from analyses that recognize inequalities in the social relations of gender, to studies motivated by a desire to appear neutral and inclusive. Scholarship within women’s studies and gender studies are also differentiated by the extent to which studies are aimed at simply describing women and gender relations, as opposed to undermining oppressive gender hierarchies. The latter are more likely to address issues of change and transformation, and in the process, to challenge accepted notions of what constitutes knowledge.

In view of the difficulties of sustaining longstanding regionally-based fora for gender and women’s studies, such as the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), nationally-based initiatives and centers are playing increasingly significant roles. At the same time, the interplay of international conferences, the movement of scholars across national and continental boundaries, and an increasing use of electronic technology, have complicated any straightforward reading of place and site.

The feminist agenda in gender and women’s studies entails the production of knowledge that would empower women in the struggle for liberation in the context of social transformation. Such a project would require scholarship that asks different questions from those conventionally asked, requiring new conceptualizations about wider realities that include women as well as men. In this paper, I assess the intellectual content of gender and women’s studies in Nigeria in selected thematic areas, in relation to its politics. My approach is to locate this body of scholarship in the context of the changing institutional landscape of higher education in the country, and the political and economic conditions induced by neoliberal policies. In addition, the influence of the development industry and state structures for women on the development of scholarship in gender and women’s studies are examined. Assessing the relations between intellectual content and political agenda(s) is critical for outlining the potential trajectories of such work. It is these trajectories that will indicate the direction(s) that the knowledge produced will take, and the extent to which such knowledge enhances or restricts the possibilities of a project of social transformation.