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State of Africa – Parameters and Legacies of Governance 211 PART 3 External Relations and Issue Areas CHAPTER 13 Women and Gender Beyond the Rituals of Empowerment Irene Omolola Adadevoh Introduction In rethinking women’s experiences and the rituals of their empowerment, feminist and gender researchers have continued to focus on gender relations and the consequences of segregationist policies despite highly sought after gender balance and good governance across the world. Using thematically the Nigerian-African example as its framework, this chapter looks at the rituals of empowerment in the biological, social and cognitive spheres, and interprets the marginality of women in their social roles. It shows how the gender nuances of social institutions largely receive their deiÀed force from the misconceptions of rituals inspired biologically, psychologically and religiously in symbolic representations. The machineries for entrenching the rituals of empowerment subsist therefore in the domestication of women. Their containment via social control, violence and the wider structures of sexist power has cast serious doubt on the view that we now truly live in a properly gendered world. We therefore look towards feminist empowerment theory, fully understood by critical re-examination of illogical gendered structures of inequality and differences by sex segregation and disempowerment by institutional default. This re-examination is necessitated by the desperate need to negotiate the objectiÀcation of women and to understand the national and global tragedy of negative diversity. In this context, the research attempts to identify the indispensable institutions, strategies and conditions for the afÀrmation of justice and equity for women and argues that this transformation must emerge from a systemic deconstruction of gender incongruity far beyond the rituals of empowerment. The state of gender and women in empowerment The main thematic issue of this chapter, ‘Women and Gender: Beyond the Rituals of Empowerment’, refers to the principles of gender development, such as the rational guarantee of security, rights and justice. These principles need to be re-examined because with respect to social empowerment of women 212 Africa Institute of South Africa PART 3 External Relations and Issue Areas Women and Gender they have been problematic. This is because men mostly deÀne all forms of such social empowerment and such deÀnitions tend to be seen predominantly in collective masculine terms, as opposed to the more viable personal and other models of developmental connotation. This is why there is a need to go beyond ritualistic or mere formalistic labelling in the establishment of justice and empowerment, which are construed as avoidance of conÁicts as well as the preservation of fundamental human rights of the people, irrespective of their sex or gender in the society.1 To this effect, just and secured gender empowerment refers to the assurances to ascertain one’s rights and dues within the society. Hence empowerment is backed by the absence of any sexually induced inhibition, violence or segregation in the family, economic, educational, political and other spheres of social life. In socially contextualising the state of gender and women in development, Mitchell argued that four structures of society needed to be institutionally transformed in order for women to be empowered and developed. These structures include those that affect the production, reproduction, sexuality, and the socialisation of children within diverse social networks.2 All of these structures are embodied in the culture, family, economic, educational, political and religious spectrum of human-social relations. The study speciÀcally focuses on cultural, religious, family, political, economic and educational problems, and centres on the productive and reproductive valuation of women as elicited by patriarchal mythical traditions. Redefining culture and its basis of sexual polarisation The imperative to redeÀne culture stems from the point of view that culture refers to a unique system in which gender development and empowerment can be either synthesised or desynthesised, because it is a social system that coordinates or segregates gender relations. Ordinarily, culture is a system abstracted from human and social action, in other words, it is a system of values, meanings or signiÀcances and symbols of human existence.3 This implies that culture gives us the perspective necessary to rethink the meaning of the terms of human and social relations; it also gives us the impetus to leap over inconsistencies in such relations and clear new paths for rational and sustainable development.4 While it is true that gender development and its subsequent empowerment strategy are a collective responsibility, the assumption of masculine dominance as imposed on culture by patriarchal superiority makes many...

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