...themes and morals in the novel. The novel is said to be the best of the author, Buchi Emecheta’s collection. Nnu ego, the main character of the novel shows us the unfamiliar side where the relationship of females to motherhood, and how our cultural norms provide basics for judgement by humans. The novel rejects the feminist codes normally associated with motherhood. In the world we live in, we come across different societal cultures and norms, in this very essay we discuss the negative aspects of women adhering to societal norms and how women all round the world are likely to end up like Nnu Ego. Nigeria is a larger country with different cultures where some believe the first born child must be a girl, while others also believe in sending off their female children as soon as their ready for marriage. Such actives have been responsible for many societal problems faced in Nigeria. The novel by Buchi Emecheta shows us the violence that our culture causes makes people to develop some kind of violence against people who do not follow cultural norms, a good example was when it was time for Agunwa to be buried, Nwokocha Agbadis eldest wife who is said to have died due to the unpleasant scene of her husband and Ona. It’s a culture in their land that the personal slaves of Agunwa be buried with her as she will need them in her afterlife, they have a belief that good slaves will jump into the grave willingly, but this beautiful girl had begged for her life and refused to enter her owners...
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...Islam Promotes Feminism In Afghanistan, there is a beautiful, young married lady, and her name is Aisha. She was tortured and burned by her husband, so she decided to go back to her family, When, husband knew that, he took her and chopped her ears an nose. What he did was horrible and inhumane, and it is really depressing to know that women are mistreated nowadays. “Afghanistan's propaganda war takes a new twist,” Anthony (2010). However, Blackburn, (2015), writes in her article “7 Remarkable Things About Khadija, Wife of the Prophet of Islam” that Muslim women enjoyed their freedom in the Islamic society. Islamic feminism existed 1,400 years ago. For example, the first Muslim woman is Khadija was the first woman that Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)...
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...make ends meet for her family. She became a Christian at a young age. She enjoyed going to church; it was a getaway from her unhappy life at home. Her older brother who was planning to go as a missionary died, at 25 years old, she decided to go in his place. She embarked on her missionary journey to calabar in 1975 where her battle for women’s rights began, she fell sick from malaria several times and eventually passed away in 1915, nearly forty years after coming to Africa, at the age of 66. Mary Slessor has become an inspiration to all who hear her story. She was not only a pioneer missionary, but also an activist for women in general. Slessor campaigned against injustices against women. Witchcraft and superstition were prevalent in Nigeria when she arrived there because traditional society had been torn apart by the slave trade. Human sacrifice routinely followed the death of a village dignitary for instance tribal customs like killing one wife of a chief in order for her soul to accompany her husband in the dead and custom that broke her heart was 'twin-murder’. The tribes thought that twins were a result of a curse caused by an evil spirit that fathered one of the children. Both babies were brutally murdered by breaking their backs and cutting them up into pieces and left in the evil forest for the insects and wild animal to devour, the mother was ostracized and kicked out of society....
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...PUBLIC POLICY AND GENDER POLITICS IN NIGERIA INTRODUCTION Despite the seemingly progressive actions by various regimes to redress women's conditions, the institutional environment dominated by men manifest contradictory gender politics. In Nigeria, as elsewhere, power relations are predicated on gender, which may be exercised in different domains (Pereira 2002:1). This chapter examines public policy and gender politics in governance, the social sector (widowhood practices) and education. PUBLIC POLICIES ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS Since the end of Second World War, there has been a widespread global concern for women's rights. Several international instruments have been adopted to attempt to resolve the problem of women's marginalization. The long list of international instruments include the 1948 Declaration on Human Rights, the 1976 Covenant on Human Rights, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination, and the 1985 Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies. The Nigerian state has also responded to the international environment through adoption of public policies and programmes to redress the imbalance in gender differences in the social, economic and political spheres. In 2000, the Nigerian government adopted the National Policy on Women. The government considered the policy as its commitment to the development of all sectors of the society and to institutionalize processes which will pilot the Nigerian society towards social equity, justice and a much-improved...
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...Why don't you feel it? I don't know, I don't know. You don't have to live next to me, just give me my equality!" Feldstein demonstrates Simone’s increasing politicization through textual analysis of songs like “Mississippi Goddam”, her involvement with various organizations, and her on-stage embrace of African culture and clothing. Feldstein analysis describes Simone’s denunciation of the “going slow” and outspoken criticism of gradual change in race relations in the early 1960s, much before the traditionally-held rise of black power or second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s. Feldstein presents accounts of her fundraising benefits for SNCC, CORE, NAACP and other groups to show her desirability as a performer whose music, training, and background were accessible and well-received by whites and blacks of different classes. Feldstein describes Simone’s romanticized reception of Africa upon a 1961 trip to Lagos, Nigeria, which was a pivotal turn to physically linking African American struggle with African freedom through black cultural nationalism (via clothes, the “natural”). Simone had great success in...
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...patriarchalism and accept the conditions they are born in it. Also mentioned are women who formed networks within households and used their emotional hold over men to gain some power. In China’s history there are women who came to rule China in a patriarchal society such as Empress Wu and Empress Dowager Cixi. Differences in women’s conditions vary depending on the particular country. In Pakistan for instance, girls like Malala Yousafzai are shot by the Taliban just for advocating education for women where she lives. Pakistan has such political groups like that of the Taliban that enforce a patriarchal society so harshly they kill for it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian women that advocates feminism for women in Africa. In her speech “We Should All Be Feminists” she talks about how in Nigeria, Lagos in particular, women are not acknowledged or allowed in clubs or restaurants when they are not with men. Differences in country or society may change the type of women’s conditions but the patriarchal influences of men remain a limiting factor on women’s potential. Upper-class women are often considered more inferior to men than lower-class women because they typically are not forced to work as much as lower-class women do. Lower-class women along with men both usually have to work to provide for their families. In order for her family to get by, lower-class families often need two incomes. Upper-class women in patriarchal societies depend on their husband to provide for their families...
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...Bargaining with Patriarchy Deniz Kandiyoti Gender and Society, Vol. 2, No. 3, Special Issue to Honor Jessie Bernard. (Sep., 1988), pp. 274-290. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0891-2432%28198809%292%3A3%3C274%3ABWP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W Gender and Society is currently published by Sage Publications, Inc.. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/sage.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Fri Jun 15 11:56:33 2007 BARGAINING W I T H PATRIARCHY DENIZ K A N D I Y O T I Richmond College, United Kingdom T h i s article argues that systematic comparative analyses of women's strategies and coping mechanisms lead to a...
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...A foremost feminist Ann Oakley distinguishes between sex and gender where she says, ‘‘sex’ is a biological term: ‘gender’ a psychological and cultural one. Common sense suggest that they are merely two ways of looking at the same division and that someone who belongs to, say, the female sex will automatically belong to the corresponding (feminine) gender. In reality this is not so. To be a man or a woman, boy or a girl, is as much a function of dress, gesture, occupation, social network and personality, as it is of possessing a particular set of genitals.’ (Oakley, 1972:158). Sex as Oakley said refers to the biological difference of being a male or female which can be usually fixed, while gender is the cultural differences between men and women in the society and it can change over time. In societies women and men are expected to behave in ways which are usually expected of them. The differences with sex and gender yet, the perception have different connections. This means despite the fact that sex is biological and gender is social, social definitions are often given to biological attributes, and indeed, most social connotations arise from biological attribute. For example, the reference to women as the weaker sex has a biological base their possession of less physical strength relative to men. Analysing the statement made by Marchbank and Letherby (2007) which says, ‘Sex is deemed to be natural whereas gender is seen as the social expression of natural, biological differences...
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...Burch, L. M. (n.d.). Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Retrieved March 24, 2016, from http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hbem20#.VvS04RasIlI Introduction- In the critical analysis “Kissing in the Carnage: An Examination of Framing on Twitter During the Vancouver Riots” by Lauren M. Burch, Evan L. Frederick & Ann Pegoraro; it was certain that the biggest hockey game of the National Hockey League season had been occurring, but the riot it has spawned in Vancouver makes it look like something far more politically charged may be the cause. In the introduction of the text it states “On June 15, 2011, more than 150,000 fans assembled on the streets of Vancouver to watch game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins. Within minutes of the Canucks loss, a riot began. One aspect that made this event unique was that it was documented on Twitter” this would clearly indicate that there was a relationship between the fans knowledge of the current affair which was the hockey game and the Literary review-RQ- 1. Is there a relationship between social media use and KNOWLEDGE of current affairs? 2. What is the relationship between social media use and knowledge of stand your ground law? 3. What is the relationship between social media use and attitude toward stand your ground law? Methodology- In the text it is stated that Twitter is a fairly new medium within the sport communication scenery; a growing body of literature...
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...Keira Harrow 2. What is gender? Explain and give examples of how conflict and functionalists see gender. How does feminism differ from conflict theory? Give examples. What are two key points west and Zimmerman make about”doing gender” explain and give examples. Gender is not only achieved but it is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means. Gender is learned cultural ideas about what it means to be feminine and masculine. You assume sex based on cultural cues. Gender is socially constructed in that gender differences mean different treatment take for example like the president like Johnson stated (July 10) would get different treatment than just a working man. Gender can be a status which is your biological sex which is a category for men and women. Gender has roles in which there are expectations regarding proper behavior, attitudes and activities of males and females. Johnson stated (July 10) that an example would be care giving in that although there are no biological markers for care giving its seen as a woman’s role where she is seen as the caretaker and the man the breadwinner. We come to know our gender roles by what society expects from males and females. We start learning gender in childhood. Take for example education where schools often award kids based on gender. Kindergarten graduation awards where boys were given awards like “most eager learner”, “most scientific” whereas girls were, “all around sweetheart” and “cutest personality” etc. Conflict...
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...Introduction Ethics is the systematic study of the fundamental principles of morality. It is an attempt to explain moral principles. It is concerned with the question of right or wrong in human behavior. It explains how men ought to behave and why it is wrong or right to behave in a certain way. Ethics weighs human actions or inactions on a moral scale to determine whether the action is morally good or morally bad. Thomas Hobbes on ethics explained it as the science of “virtue and vice.”1 Morality and ethics cannot be divorced. Morality is the basis of ethics, the latter is the explicit reflection on, and the systematic study of the former (Joseph Omoregbe 1993 p.3)2. How then do we decide what is morally right? Is it based on universal laws or divine instructions? Are laws truly universal? If they are not, how then can the rightness or wrongness of culturally divergent societies be determined? Philosophers agree and disagree in varied proportions on answers to these questions. It is normal if you disagree too. For the purpose of this paper, an attempt will be made to look into the concept of ethical relativism, its importance and areas of deviation from ethical absolutism. History of Ethical Relativism Though moral relativism did not become a prominent topic in philosophy or elsewhere until the twentieth century, it has ancient origins. In the classical Greek world, both the historian Herodotus and the sophist Protagoras appeared to endorse some form of relativism. The early...
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...PSYCHOPATHS IN POWER: THE COLLAPSE OF THE AFRICAN DREAM IN A PLAY OF GIANTS Olusegun Adekoya Department of English Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife Nigeria oadekoya2@yahoo.com AN ABSTRACT A critical investigation of Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants, the paper discusses what the playwright himself calls the Aminian theme, that is, African leaders’ obsession with power, a seductive drive that breeds moral corruption, dictatorship, delusions, economic distortions and ruination, megalomania, perversion and desecration of all that is good in African traditions, and the evaporation of all the dreams of greatness, of nationalism, liberation from colonial thraldom, disease, ignorance and poverty, and of pan-Africanism nursed in the heady days of Independence celebrations. The four despots caricatured in the play are Field-Marshal Kamini (late Idi Amin, deposed president of Uganda), Emperor Kasco (Jean-Bedel Bokassa, former Emperor of the Central African Republic), Benefacio Gunema (late President Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea), and General Barra Tuboum (late President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo). They are in New York to attend the General Assembly of the United Nations. In response to the Secretary-General’s request for a work of art representative of each member nation’s culture, say, a miniaturized bust of the president, they sit for a life-size group sculpture on Kamini’s suggestion and in what appears to be a vivid demonstration of the old...
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...The campaign for suffrage - a historical background Today, all British citizens over the age of eighteen share a fundamental human right: the right to vote and to have a voice in the democratic process. But this right is only the result of a hard fought battle. The suffrage campaigners of the nineteenth and early twentieth century struggled against opposition from both parliament and the general public to eventually gain the vote for the entire British population in 1928. ------------------------------------------------- Who took part in the campaign? The first women's suffrage bill came before parliament in 1870. Soon after its defeat, in 1897, various local and national suffrage organisations came together under the banner of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) specifically to campaign for the vote for women on the same terms 'it is or may be granted to men'. The NUWSS was constitutional in its approach, preferring to lobby parliament with petitions and hold public meetings. In contrast, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), formed in 1903, took a more militant view. Almost immediately, it characterised its campaign with violent and disruptive actions and events. Together, these two organisations dominated the campaign for women's suffrage and were run by key figures such as the Pankhurstsand Millicent Fawcett. However, there were other organisations prominent in the campaign, including the Women's Freedom League (WFL). These groups were often...
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...Women: A Personal Worldview Narrative An individual’s worldview may originate from how and manner through which knowledge and understanding are offered and obtained. A world view in my opinion, worldview is an introspective view on how everyday activities are color, organized, filtered, and interpreted in regards to personal cultural perceptions. Additionally, my worldview, which continues to develop, is an interpersonal process, which began when I was a young man in rural society of Africa and subsequently in civilized society of Europe, Asia and America. Thinking about the concept of worldview found me rendering deep thoughts about my life so far. Why? One may ask; well, the total sum of my worldview is directly and indirectly shaped by the different assumed and certain roles women plaid in my life. These experiences gave me a unique interpretation of the world. Fifteen years was the age I realized that my culture is one that discriminates against women. It is a culture where women are viewed as property and used only to satisfy the sexual libido of their male counterparts; a culture where women has no opinion either in the family or society, except for that of their husband if married and father’s if unmarried; and finally a culture where female genital cutting is still practiced. Ultimately, there is no potential for women to actually have and fulfill a dream. In such culture, there were three women-my mother, and two grandmas. Domestic violence, abusive behavior, and...
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...| | | Experiential Analysis A Reflective Structured Essay Introduction A successful organisation is built on the communication that develops between its constituents (Dietz & Den Hartog 2006). Encouraging efficient communication within any organisation can prove a difficult task, especially when faced with the complexity of a diverse workforce. The organisation being considered is a small accounting company (‘The Company’) located in Zimbabwe, South Africa. Due to its ‘multiplicity of traditions and skin tones’ (Brand South Africa 2011), South Africa has been portrayed as a ‘Rainbow Nation’ since the end of the Apartheid era. When diversity is not managed and monitored carefully, differences can lead to highly counter-productive communication dilemmas. Two fundamental aspects of diversity will be discussed: Firstly, cultural differences are common throughout The Company and have proven to be an issue of emotional and economic importance. Five of Hofstede’s (1994) dimensions of culture can be used to explain the reluctance of employees from different countries to effortlessly integrate their personalities and ideas within The Company. Power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and long-term orientation will be analysed in terms of their affect on interpersonal communication...
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