"People like you can never be here": Gendering space and Democratic Dissonance.
"People like you can never be here": Gendering space and Democratic Dissonance.
"People like you can never be here," he retorted this at least three times in the video that has circulated online. It sounds like a statement of conviction, something he was saying on behalf of most men in Nigerian politics. A hidden and unwritten constitution that women who excel, like Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, can never be there. This seems to echo what I think I have heard in different variations: that it is a privilege for women to be in the red chamber.
If women like Dr. Oby, with her integrity and credentials, cannot be in the Senate, what kinds of women does the Senate want? Can women like me, on my way to completing a second PhD in the United States, be in the Senate if people like Dr. Oby can never be there? How do you expect a young girl, somewhere in rural Nigeria, who sees Dr. Oby as a role model in public leadership and aspires to the same, to feel when she hears that “people like Dr. Oby who can never be there” have hope of participating in public leadership?
A former Nigerian president once said we belong in the kitchen and other rooms. Could it be possible that this boy (I find it an insult to real men to call him a man) is echoing a sentiment that most men in Nigerian politics and other public spheres likely believe: that women don't belong there?
I ask again, and I think we should ask this boy, what kind of women qualify to be in the Senate? Let me guess.
Someone who said, "I will make you disappear, and nothing will happen."
Someone who slapped a woman in a sex shop?
someone with allegedly questionable professional legal practice in New York
Men fought within the allowed chamber, broke the maze, and tore each other's clothes.
The ones that dealt with those ENDSARS protesters in ways that they wish they could tell
The one who said a corp member deserved capital punishment
Now we know why the best brains of women can't serve in Nigeria.
I argued in my first PhD dissertation that democracy has not delivered any dividend for Nigerian women. Specifically, in my co-authored article, which originated from my dissertation, I employ a feminist interpretive lens to explore how democracy doesn't always equate to gender equality. I also highlight the various forms of advocacy that challenge the discrepancy between the promise of democracy for women's rights and the actual experiences of women.
Every time I asked students both in Nigeria and now in the United States what stereotype or trope they had to deal with in spaces. Females in engineering say guys question why they are in STEM. Just a few weeks ago in my class, my students were talking about how when we go to the hospital, we always expect that the doctor will be male. Those in sports tell of how male counterparts ask them to go to female sports.
Can someone help me ask that boy who are the kind of women who can be in the Senate?
