GENDER ISSUES AND THE CHALLENGES OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Theoretical Review

Modernity and Post Modernity Theory

Modernity and post modernity is what was often referred to in the nineteenth century as the “woman question” was in the modern period driven from theoretical debate to an insistent demand for political change, particularly when it came to the issue of enfranchisement. The next generation of New women in the modern period, then, were the suffragettes of first two decades and then theflappers of the twenties. This was a period when women finally saw the political implementation of a number of equal-rights issues, particularly the vote, which was not extended to women in England until 1918 and was not extended to women in the United States until the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

The Jazz Age of the twenties followed, a time when women began to rebel against earlier conventions for proper female behaviour, a rebellion exemplified in both changing fashion and changing manners (Smoking, drinking, Sexual experiment etc).

Also of note in the modern period was the large number of women writing difficult modernist works that they defined against the market (and the traditional novel, which had formerly been the accepted outlet for female creativity). In literature, Virginia woolf, H.D and Gertrude stein are particularly notable figures.

Restoration/Enlightenment theory of gender: By most scholarly accounts, the eighteenth century was a transitional period in the understandings of gender and sexuality. It was during this period that the ground work was laid for the “naturalization” of gender categories, which became especially important in the nineteenth century and which provided for the belief that gendered behaviour was a matter of biology that, in short biology was destiny. Eighteenth century medial science paved the way for a strict binary system of gender by “discovering” the incommensurable differences between male and female bodies.

Under this new system of sexual dimorphism, women and men were taken to be one another’s opposites in most things. Whereas women were increasingly taken to be passive and passionless, for example men were taken to be aggressive and sexual charged. The assumption of binary gender did not happen overnight because, of particular importance in this period is the rise of Enlightenment values of equality, fraternity, and liberty which many female thinkers argued needed to be applied to all humanity including women.

However, women’s liberation’s was thus from an early age tied to other issues such as class, politics, imperialism and also race (for Evangelical women and radical feminists were particularly outspoken and influential in the fight to abolish slavery in commonwealth Britain).

Gender is a social construction and codification of differences between the sexes and social relationship between women and men (Oppong 1987, Mason 1984). Historical, ideological, cultural, religions, ethnic and economic factors that can be changed largely in the course of time, influence the society’s outlook at gender by political, economic or cultural influence (Oppong 1987, Mason 1984).

Anken (1975) defined development as strategies, policies and programmes for the improvement of the rural areas. Olujobi (2001) assert that “gender is a division of humanity into two distinctive categories based on their sexes”. Sex is seen as the obvious biological differences between men and women. To some sociologists, it is used to connote the roles played by women and men and deals not only with differences (how society constructs feminine and masculine people by also with how the society connotes power on each of the sexes.

Jaham (1974) posited that, the issues of women most especially, involvement in economic activities to alleviating poverty is not analogous to the rights of marginal populations, minorities and other disadvantaged groups, but is one concerning half the total population of any country and their involvement in all spheres of life in the process of social and economic transformation. Nigeria women, like their counterparts in other parts of African tradition have multiple responsibilities as mothers and producers and therefore tend to engage in activities that are home-based and less risky (Nwoye, 2005). According to Nwoye he maintained that, these have negative implications, as low risk activities are often those, which produce limited returns. The reduced physical mobility of many of the rural women who operate in this category also prevents them from seeking out information on better economic opportunities.

By physical assessments and systematic studies, Nigeria’s rural areas remain very highly underdeveloped, development include massive poverty, absence of physical, social and economic infrastructures including the worsening status of rural women. There exists a huge disparity between rural and urban areas, regional government efforts. (Onokerhoraye 1978, Ude 1989, Olayiwola and Adeleye 2005).

Nseabasi (2015) maintained that, of greatest interest is the fact that today’s population is mostly dominated by women, who are subsistence agricultural practices. He further added that, the patriarchal Nature of Nigerian’s societal structures imply that women to men, which tend to narrow their spaces of opportunities and limit their participation in development.

Kamar, Lawal, Babangida and Jahun (2014) emphasize the importance of engaging women in rural development as follows:

• To reach the women, once you have reached the women, you have reached the children, you have reached nation, you have reached nation at home, in the school, in the university, in the city, in the village level, at the rural development practices, and in opportunities of engaging women in rural development activities. What critical areas should nation do to enhancing the integration of women in rural development? These and related questions are addressed with particular reference to Nigeria (kamar, Lawal, Babangida and Jahun, 2014).

Gender and development and gender mainstreaming in development are popular discursive framework between women and development (Tavira 2008, Kandiyoti 1990, Kaur and Sharma 1991).

Kandiyoti (1990) has noted the extensive contribution of women to rural development in agricultural sector with extremely primitive technology and with severely stretched time resources. The role of women in Nigeria according to kandiyoti are categorized thus:

1. Food producers and active participants in the agrarian sectors.
2. Daily household maintenance tasks
3. Small scale income generating activities
4. General contribution of their rural community

Blakely (1989) observed that, developing the rural areas has been at the core of national, regional and international governments world over. Different counties have different approaches determined by some structural and cultural developed societies depend on the neoliberal approach in which rural development are attracted from down process brought about by increase production of capital in the rural areas.

Wolman and Spitzley (1996) buttressed that production in this context is attracted to the rural areas through tax concessions, development of critical spending activities.

Brandt (1995) opined that, the many productive and developments of well-being are made possible by women, yet they are not officially considered part of the convent. Some scholars linked the challenges of rural development to the colonial masters.

Blench (2003) linked colonial policy of partial segregation in relation to investments in major development infrastructures. Time access was so problematic and information systems so underdeveloped that rural citizens were issues…British colonial interest in rural Nigeria was characterized by two prong exploitation. Inavailable only as primary resources areas for export of raw materials. The second level of exploitation same centres for the few urban centres which eventually were to serve the basic food needs of the colonial influence.

Fapohunda (2012) observed that, a nation’s population is usually almost divided evenly between males and females except under peculiar circumstances such as war or highly selective immigration which normally affect males more than females. Nevertheless, throughout the ages, the sharing of power, wealth, influence, employment etc between men and women has never been close to equality. Even most advanced countries, gender inequality in wealth distribution has remained a live issue. Over the years, many women have faced daunting challenges of joblessness, no source of livelihood, widow hood and single parenthood”.

Keld (1965) however, views development as “power of people to solve their problems using available resources with a view to eliminating poverty, pestilence and starvation. Development is a positive change, which aims at improving upon the living conditions of the individuals in the society (Obi, 1980).

The Beijing conference of 1995 stressed the employment of women as one of the central development goals of the 21st century. It adopted platform for action which called for the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the design, implementation and monitoring of all policies and programmes including development programmes.

Mba (1989) that women’s power and spheres of influence largely disappeared under the impact of colonialism and external religions, which upset existing economic and social complementarity’s between the sexes. Mba further explained that new “customary” laws on marriage created in response to men’s anxieties about the independence of women transformed the previously fluid and negotiable relations between them into rigid duties and obligations of wives between them into rigid duties and obligations of wives and women. Women came to be regarded as primary dependent on men, making it unnecessary to plan and provide for their needs; they were to work in the fields and home to produce food and other crops to support their men, who worked in documented activities that are visible.

Ogbomo (2005) observed that initially women shared in the promises of independence and saw gain in their access to education, formal employment, health care and nutritional profiles, their life expectancy at birth rose from 37 to 50 years by the end of the 1960’s. But development plans continued to be formulated and implemented without an adequate understanding of women’s contributions to the economy. Women were also absent from formal positions of decision-making and power. In 2008, the Federal office of statistics Abuja reported that about 5 percent of the female labour force worked in industry, 20 percent in services, 23 percent in sales and only 6 percent in professional, technical, administrative or managerial positions. They further highlighted that in Nigeria, female illiteracy rates aggregates to over 50% in 2007, compared to 3% for men. Hence education for women advances their economic empowerment and also promotes rural development more generally. But lack of access to formal education and training is a key barrier to women’s involvement in rural development in the society.

Hence the challenges of gender issues cannot be over-emphasized due to the trend and the shape it has taken in Nigeria towards rural development. Girls especially in the rural areas often do not go beyond primary education and school curricular has not been guided by this reality and their content is not geared to helping them acquire basic life skills.

Fapohunda (2012) maintained that curriculum is full of gender bias and lead girls into stereotypical “feminine” jobs in teaching, nursing and clerical work. He added that, it is imperative to recall that only few women are found in scientific or technical education where they could develop better skill to secure better paying jobs.

Factors influencing women participation in community development project according to French (1990) include many women looking at marriage as a pot of gold in the rainbows end. Most women before prepare up their education for family life. Giving birth is everything that a woman is looking forward to as such they give priority to marriage than the education even those who wish to attend, just went there for formality.

Nigeria women forms the major valve of economic growth and development in the rural areas and their contributions in various sectors of the economy should not be neglected, otherwise their roles towards rural development will create a lacuna that will be very difficult to fill. Hence the benevolence of women involvement in rural development starts from the household which is an off-shoot of national development. According to Ezirim (2006) citing Better life for Rural women of Mrs. Babangida as being pervasive during the regime of general Ibrahim Babagida because of their access to those in authority, they enhanced incremental women program that led to call for better education, health, increased social and economic opportunities for Nigerian women. Other projects like ‘family support’ of Mrs. Abacha and the ‘child support’ of Mrs. Obasanjo are located within this framework. He stressed that, although these projects in actual sense did not alleviate the immediate problems of the women, it moderated their activities and gave them hope of better things that would come.

More so, Ezirim (2006) opined that, despite the effort of these women groups, they have not gone without some constraints undermining women’s peace and security and these are informed by social, political and economic conditions inherent in the system. These include:

1. Negative acts by some desperate male politician that have forced many women to withdraw into their shell.
2. Lack of access to political decision making as women and girls are marginalized as people who cannot make decisions.
3. Structural violence embedded in the Nigerian society such as institutional gender, ethnic and religions inequalities and discrimination.
4. Gender discriminatory cultural practices such as widowhood rites, forced marriages.
5. Gender insensitivity by state and official neglect of interests of women.
6. Lack of good governance and leadership etc. Thus, these have not deterred the efforts of women as their role in rural development cannot be diminished by any circumstances.

According to Steinberg (2003), he observed that, bringing women to the peace table improves the quality of agreements, reached and increased the chances of success in governance reduces the likelihood or returning to war.

Anifowose (2004) pointed out that, empowerment is a sine qua non of democracy. This for Nigeria to claim to be democratic, all segments of the country including women that constitute over 50% of the population should play key roles.

Adereti (2005) maintained that a political system that does not give voice and power to over half of its population is not only disempowering but undemocratic. He further buttressed that, although all these portray the Nigerian state as no longer apathetic to women issues, the institutional environment dominated by men manifest contradictory gender policy.

From the above conceptualization, the role of women in rural development is enormous though many challenges abound, ranging from humiliation, denial of opportunities, insensitivity to women issues such as female genital mutilation, lack of access to soft loan, denial of political appointment etc.

There are theoretical perspectives by different scholars as the contribution of women to rural development. Ezirim (2006) upheld that, women participation in peace building is contributory to development and this desire to participate in governance at whatever level is premised on the ground that they constitute more than half of the population.

The functionalist writes like Radcliffe Brown, Malinowski; George Mudock and Higher and Fox emphasized that the roles of the women as the genesis of the division of labour by sex. Further studies by Talcott Parson (1955 and 1959) highlights the expressive role of women in the family with regard to the provision of warmth, security and emotional support to the man in the execution of his leadership role.

United Nations (1990) estimates 960 million illiterates’ people in the world, two third being women. Nigeria has made effort to bring educational opportunities to as many citizens as possible through the introduction of U.P.E. Egbeoma (2005) corroborating united nationals Report observed that despite the position, efforts in getting the citizens educated then has not been assigned change in education of female at all levels. No wonder Thomas Emeagwali quoting Ityavyar (2003) defined modernization feminist as those exposed to formal education, offered elective posts, have access to credit facilities, exposed to technical innovations and fundamentals of entrepreneurship Gogoy (2005) in Oduwole and Fadeyi (2013) states that in expressing the need and benefits of enhancing women’s access to financial sources as well as fostering economic diversification and growth stated that the economic and professional empowerment of women can trigger development in the united states, “women create twice as many enterprises as men, and the job creation at enterprises owned by women is larger than that of men in the top 50 companies” (Gogoy 2005).

Kiseklee (1980) women account for 80 percent of the population involved as well as the provision of basic commodities in rural communities. Socially, women have little access to power. Their prestige has in the number of children they have, women are generally regarded as the inferior sex.

Although arguably limited from a contemporary vantage point on gender issue and challenges of rural development, this offered several new perspective, one of which was to emphasize how women were consistently more disadvantaged than men in terms of income and parliamentary seats. Critical challenges of gender issues and challenges of rural development include poverty, plurality of household configuration and unmatched social recognition.

Oduwole and Fadeyi (2013) observed that, the earliest substantial work on gender with implications for thinking on poverty came with the United Nation Decade for women (1975-1985) report. In drawing attention to the invisibility of women in development, the United Nations Decades spawned unprecedented efforts to discover and expose what women did in comparison with men.

According to Surara (1995) the economic crises in the nation has given priority to the search for food cover and above everything else. Therefore women and their children (girls) are used most often to fight poverty in the family by engaging in street hawking, prostitution, begging, some are given out in marriage at an early age in life, for the women, the greatest responsibility is to keep the family together. Corner (2002) in explaining the set of perspectives on poverty emanating from this early research on women was that it revealed the difficulties of obtaining meaningful data on any aspect of women’s lives. This constituted a major impetus for calls made under the auspices of CEDAW (convention on the Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (1979)) not only for sex-disaggregated statistics but for indicators which measured changes between women and men overtime (Corner 2003, Gaudart 2002).

Socio-cultural factor, also influence women participation in the development project. According to (Mboh and Ogazi 1995) the society perception of women’s role in development is unfavorable to the effective contributions of women. Since the time of our ancestor and even now women are perceived as subordinate to male authority. It is expected that women should submit totally to men’s control and dominion since they should be seen not heard. In addition, society and culture impose severe restriction on women.

Corner (2010) opined that another feature of early gender research with relevance for poverty analysis was growing recognition not only of the plurality of household configuration, but of internal differentiation within the idealized natural household unit (nominally comprising a husband, wife and children).

Because of the above issue affecting women, it should be noted that they are inherent and institutional challenges on women as part of household.

Unequivocally, research has indicated using example that in directing development projects to male household heads, women either missed out as heads of household in their right, or as members of male-headed arrangements.

In the case of the latter, for instance, it became clear that increasing resources to male household heads did not automatically confer benefits to women and children. This raised questions about the relevance of the household as a unitary, altruistic entity and, ipso facto, as an appropriate target of interventions for the promotion of economic development and/or the alleviation of poverty (Corner 2010).

Other issues which has affected women seriously in time past and now is the structural Adjustment programme. (Elson 1989; Moser 1989; Safa and Antrobus 1992) anchored their views on a spate of research on the grassroots impacts of structural adjustment program in different parts of the world demonstrated unequivocally that the burdens of debt crises and neoliberal reforms were being shouldered unequally between women and men.

Another influence of women in rural development efforts include religious problem. In our country Nigeria, the Christian and Islamic religion put man as the head of the family. This belief in male superiority complex has been transferred to the political arena. Sheikh (1975) strongly opined that, it is not impossible for a woman to become the president of Nigeria. This belief and numerous doctrines by religion and male chauvinism syndrome make parents subjugate their girls and confine them to domestic chores at home while boys are allowed to go to school. Fapohunda (2012) observed that, women provide the backbone of the rural economy in the country. He maintained that about 80 percent of the economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture and women comprise about 47 percent of the total agricultural labour force. Food production is the major activity of rural women and their responsibilities and labour inputs often exceed those of men in most areas. He further stressed that women provide much of the labour for men’s cultivation of export crops, from which they drive little direct benefit.

Deckard (1983) argued that the biology of sex determines that women are limited to the home and children and must play a subordinate role in the economy, public affairs. He further corroborated that in fact, women are naturally mothers, and their greatest pleasure and true fulfillment lies in maternity, the one out of a few things that women are good at.

Hence, in a research conducted by Fapohunda (2012), the following are the challenges of gender issues:

• Access to land: Agricultural intensification, population growth and economic change have led to substantial shift from common property systems of tenure towards more centralized resources control. He added that, in the process, women and poorer people generally have lost out. Women rarely own land and when they do, their holdings tend to be smaller and less fertile than those of men.
• The labour challenge: Labour is a challenge to females because men have left rural economics in search of more viable livelihoods and women have lost access to male help or the money they may have previously provided.
• Credit and other inputs: Women faces problems of access to other inputs, including credit, technology, extension services, training and marketing. Banks demand collateral in the form of landed property. Food security cannot be assured without improving the situation of women producers.
• Women’s employment: The ongoing economic crises and the gulf between job creation and the growth in the numbers of job seekers have worsened and the employment situation for men and women alike. But women face greater vulnerabilities in the labour market because of their relative lack of education and training, the tendency to channel women into certain occupations and the continuous heavy burdens of unpaid domestic work, child bearing and child-care, which restrict thetime and energy available for income earning activities.
• Education and Training: Education for women advances their economic empowerment, and also promotes development more generally. lack of access to formal education and training is a key barrier to women’s employment and advancement in the society.
• Health and sanitation: Inadequate portable water, sanitation and waste disposal in urban and rural areas leave populations vulnerable to water-borne diseases and other environmental diseases. These conditions are compounded for women by some unhelpful or even dangerous religious norms and practices centred on their reproductive and productive functions, their heavy workloads, high birth rates and socio-cultural factors that limit their dietary intake.
• Legal Rights and Political Participation: The Nigeriangovernment have instrument on women’s rights and liberty.

However, these have not been enacted into national law. Moreover, many women are ignorant of the existence of laws that recognized their rights and can be invoked for their protection.

Various systems of customary law, religious ideologies and cultural stereotyping have been used to treat women as minors in the law and household, with few women having equal access to political offices and positions.

Some authors have argued against the increased participation of women in all spheres of economic and political activities, (Oduwole and Fadeyi 2013). Oduwole and Fadeyi (2013) highlighted other challenges of gender to include:

• Female poverty rate: Female poverty rate is particularly high in Nigeria because of race, religion and social-political background.
• Lack of access to formal education by the female folk as against their male counterpart.
• Poor implementation of NEEDS and SEEDs document: The implementation of NEEDs and SEEDS has not improved situation of Nigerian women who bear the brunt of inequality.
• Lack of effective enforcement and monitoring mechanism on the right to girl child education.
• The cost and availability of finance and access to the funds.
• Challenge of human capacity to handle business and constraints for many firms in Nigeria.
• Business loans usually require collateral culture.

Despite various avalanche of challenges which confront women in our rural areas, women still eschew the damning effect of gender discriminatory issues, and take full position to ensure that there is a better society through their productive effort.

Kofi Annan (2003) in a journal of research in peace, Gender and Development, (Oduwole and Fadeyi, 2013) maintained that “study after study has shown that women do not play central role. When women are fully involved, the benefits can be seen immediately. Families are healthier and better fed, their income, savings and reinvestment go up. And what is true of families is also true of communities and, in the longrun, of whole countries….”

Pantiye and garbe (1991) identified the common features of Nigerian women to include thus:

1. Tolerance and endurance
2. High need for associations, frankness in matters they considered serious and emotional stability.
3. Stubbornness to a belief.
4. Moral decadence and national instability.

The above distinctive features/qualities of Nigerian women bring them to bare on any organization they are managing and that makes them excel, (Oduwole and Fadeyi, 2013). Hence to bail Nigeria from their economic quagmire, most of the qualities of Nigerian women are needed so as to relief them their balmy and current predicament of gender issues and the inherent challenges of rural development in the orbit of Nigeria.

Fapohunda (2012) in an international journal of academic research in business and social sciences outlined some factors to overcome the challenges of gender issues as follows:

• Equality of responsibility
• Access to resources
• Reduction in labour time
• Good education and health
• Leadership and organization

Peters (2010) said “that it is no doubt that in any contemporary society, population either in terms of size or composition has far reaching implications for change, development and the quality of life. To correct these anomalies, Ayu (1987, 1992), Wushish (1993), Arene (1993), Mazrui (1991) rightly suggests that gender analysis be made a standard for economic analysis and of project design and monitoring.

In a similar suggestion, Sylvia (2003) opined that, “poor people acutely feel their powerlessness and insecurity, their vulnerability and lack of dignity. Rather than taking decisions for themselves, they are subject to the decisions of others in nearly all aspects of their lives. Their lack of education or technical skills holds them back. Poor health may mean that employment is erratic and low-paid. Their very poverty excludes them from the means of escaping it. Their attempts even to supply basic needs meet persistent obstacles, economic or social, obdurate or whimsical, legal or customary. violence is an ever present threat, especially to women.

In Nigeria, the underestimation of the female population growth has been blamed for the marginalization of women because the actual number is far higher than the member accounted for (Aderant, (2002), Annekova (2001), Ileduru (2002), Lewis (2006) and Mansor (2005).

The research observed that gender equality will only be possible if husband should subject themselves to ‘transfer of opportunity’ to their wife in order to elevate the women folk to positions of great influence, when they grab opportunities instead of acquiring it as men’s property which would rather lead to the balkanization of women power and influence towards rural development.

2.2 Empirical Review

Oduwole and fadeyi (2013) in a journal of research in peace, gender and development, generated a gender statistics on the number of workers classified by industry according to sex.

Table 2.1: The number of workers classified by industry (unit: the person %) in Nigeria as at 2008.

Source: Federal Ministry of women Affairs and social development (2008b) Nigeria gender statistics book,

Abuja; Government printed.

From the above statistics, we can see clearly that it is a neglect on the right of women on development. The 1999 constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria clearly stipulates gender equality, customary and religious laws continue to restrict women and men in terms of social, education, political and economic achievements cannot be demarcated from some problems which hinder parity between the two groups in a common parlance.

The UNDP report 2005 indicates that in 55 countries with comparable data, the average female wage is three quarters (3/4) of the male wage in the non agricultural sector. In developing countries, women still constitute less than one seventh (1/7) of administrators and managers. Women occupy only 10 percent of parliamentary seats and only 6 percent of cabinet positions.

Yemisi and Aisha (2009) presented the statistics on the extent of the participation of women in decision making-in agriculture in parts of Kaduna State Nigeria in a journal of Humanity and social sciences tagged gender issues in agriculture and rural development in Nigeria; the role of women thus:

Table 2.2: Extent of Participation of Women in Decision Making in Agriculture in Parts of Kaduna State, Nigeria

• Figure in parenthesis are the percentages

Source: Damisa and Yohanna 2007

Nseabasi (2015) in his journal, women and rural development in Nigeria; some critical issues for policy consideration tabulated the selected rural development programme and women involvement from pre-independence in Nigeria thus:

Table 2.3: Selected Rural Development Program and Women Involvement from Pre-independence Till Date

Source