GLOBAL TREND TOWARDS GENDER EQUALITY: NIGERIA’S EXPERIENCE IN FOCUS

Abstract

This paper examines the struggle for gender equality in Nigeria. It observes that despite Nigeria’s ratification of virtually all international instruments on the protection and promotion of gender rights and equality, she has failed to domesticate most of them. Consequently, this has slowed down the pace of women emancipation in Nigeria; it has also denied women rights activists in Nigeria a wider and stronger platform to agitate for the enforcement of women’s rights. The paper further highlights and examines inter-alia, the galaxies of gender discriminatory laws that still exist in the pages of Nigerian statute books and the harmful cultural practices that have for decades impeded the rights of women in Nigeria. The paper also observes that the gender inequalities in the system have occasioned an intense marginalization and subjugation of Nigerian women to the background, in virtually every sphere of life; the paper recommends new strategies to be adopted by gender rights activists in combating these institutionalized discriminations. The
strategies include; an urgent review of all gender discriminatory laws in Nigeria, sensitization of Nigerian women on their legal rights through intensified aggressive advocacy and enlightenment, establishment of more gender violation monitoring agencies in Nigeria. The sensitization of Nigerian law enforcement agents and judges on the need for a stricter enforcement of women’s rights, immediate abolition by the Nigerian government of all harmful cultural practices that impede women’s rights, an urgent domestication of all international Treaties, Nigeria has ratified, and enactment of more specific gender friendly based legislations. Finally, a case is made for more appointments of women to hold political offices. The paper further recommends that further researches should be channeled towards discovering the reasons for the apparent high level of complacency of Nigerian women to these persistent flagrant violations of their rights.