WUNRN
Nigeria – Gender Norms in a Nigerian
University – Internalized Conservative Gender Beliefs & Practices Resistant
to Change
Are universities necessarily transformative spaces for women students? Research at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, raises critical questions around how conservative gender norms are replicated by young students, in particular in the burgeoning culture of religious student organisations.
By Abiola Odejide*
- 22 September 2014
Are universities necessarily transformative spaces for
women students? Research at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, raises critical
questions around how conservative gender norms are replicated by young
students, in particular in the burgeoning culture of religious student
organisations.
What are the perceptions of being a woman on a Nigerian
university campus in spaces which are not strictly regulated by the university
authorities? What are the perceptions of female sexuality among the students
and staff in these locations?
This article explores the perceptions and the lived
experiences of female students in the University of Ibadan (UI), the oldest
Nigerian university, focusing on the halls of residence and religious
fellowships on campus. It also explores the perception of women’s sexuality and
its pervasive impact on relationships in the institution.
Like most African universities, UI has been affected by
serious transformations in political economy that have occurred at both global
and local levels. The university has also been adversely impacted by issues
such as national political instability, severe under-funding, academic brain drain,
and violent agitations which make its governance appear more suited for men.
It is within this context that the university is expected
to fulfil its mandate of being transformative and empowering. It is also
expected that women students entering its mainly masculine terrain will be, in
some way, automatically elevated. Nigerian women still have unequal access to
higher education – about 37% of the total UI student body was female at the
time of the research presented in this article. Moreover, as the research
found, part of the lived experience of being a woman on a Nigerian university
campus is being portrayed and treated as subordinate. This subordination is
ostensibly due to “traditional culture,” as well as social and familial factors
which view women as inherently fragile, dependent on male protection and
requiring surveillance and control.
Religious and residential life at UI
Part of the complex realities that have shaped student
life at UI in the last two decades has been the rise of transnational religious
movements such as Pentecostalism and reformist (more fundamentalist) Islam.
Although students’ religious fellowships have existed since the earliest days
of the university, they were on the fringes of the larger student body until
the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the emergence of strong evangelical groups of
Christians and Muslims.
Approximately 7,500 UI students (37% of the total student
population as of the 2004/2005 academic year) are registered as members of
religious organisations. These highly structured fellowships have a reputation
of providing students with social and academic support networks, and also
protection against campus violence.
Less than half of UI students live on campus. At the time
of this study, only 44.6% of students (30% and 15% of male and female students
respectively) were accommodated in the university’s twelve halls of residence.
Eight of these halls were single sex while four were mixed (co-ed). The halls
form a strong part of the university culture on account of the deep ties which
students forge there, ties which frequently endure beyond graduation.
The method of studying perceptions of women in these
religious and residential spaces was mainly qualitative, combining interviews
and focus group discussions with both male and female students, including
leaders of the fellowships and residential halls. Documentary evidence about
the fellowship groups was also used. In addition, the Dean of Students, wardens
of selected halls and staff advisers of the religious fellowships were
interviewed.
Women’s ‘natural’ place
A major finding of the study was the general perception
of, and acquiescence to, a gendered hierarchy which privileged male students.
Men were credited with superior skills in leadership and in people, time and
crisis management. This position was supported by essentialist notions of
women’s ‘natural’ temperament, as well as by various cultural constructs, the
generally low status of women in Nigeria and religious doctrine.
The cohort of leaders of the religious fellowships was
predominantly male, in spite of the large number of women members. Only two
groups had up to 30% female leadership and, even then, these women were in turn
subordinate to male leadership. The Amira (female head of the women’s arm of
Muslim Students’ Society) vigorously dismissed the possibility of women’s
leadership by declaring: “Astagafulla (God forbids it), Islam does not
encourage the female to be head of the community.”
In the women’s halls of residence, women served as
executives but even in a co-ed hall that was 80% female, there were no women in
the executive. Women’s participation in student politics as potential
candidates for elective offices was low and frowned upon, as was women’s
activism. A man residing in a mixed hall said that women who engaged in student
politics " are probably... those feminists. Those who believe in women’s
emancipation. But anybody who is oriented towards getting married, having a
family, settling down, definitely, the man will not want it."
The reasons given for women’s ostensible apathy were
astounding: for example, their “fragility,” “lack of courage,” “inferiority
complex,” “keeping malice,” “being more controversial.” These traits were
opposed to “men’s boldness,” “self-confidence,” and “strong heart.” The
resignation of many women to their marginalisation in university politics is
captured in the words of a female hall warden: “Some of (the female students)
will always say ‘What can a woman do? Let me just face my academics.’” Only
occasional reference was made to an institutional culture that inhibited female
participation, such as the psychological and physical violence that
characterized student politics and made it threatening to women students.
The domestication of women students was observed in both
the secular and religious spaces being researched. Considerable exploitative
interactions were reported, mainly in the form of women providing domestic
services by cooking for men in the residential halls and doing chores such as
decorating, sweeping and cooking in the religious fellowships. Where permitted,
public preaching by women was limited.
Infantilisation and control of women
Closely related to the relegation of women students to
the background was their complaint of being infantilised by female hall
wardens, who enforced regulations on visiting periods, “morality,” dress codes
and “loitering” around the hall by “ladies.” That male students were subjected
to less authoritarian treatment by their male wardens and hall
supervisors was resented and seen as sexist.
Trivialising or labelling of female students was common,
for example, in the derisive references to residents of one of the female halls
as “butty”, that is, overly westernised, privileged, and not suitable as
“wife material.”
In the fellowships, women’s high levels of participation
in religious activities were stigmatized as excessive, juvenile, and evidence
of their being “somehow feebleminded, more easily moved than guys.” This
participation was viewed as advantageous, though, as a strategy for women to
identify suitable partners. A male respondent said: “There’s a big rush in the
husband market. In the fellowships and crusades, you will see the number of
sisters who are there to get a husband.”
Female sexuality and disorder
In striking contrast to the strong emphasis placed on
women’s subsidiary role in the university, their sexuality was constructed as
powerful and threatening to the social order. According to this discourse,
women’s sexuality was overwhelming and also impossible for women to control by
themselves. One of the coordinators of a women’s Christian fellowship presented
women students as highly subversive of social norms, " female students...
go about nude, all in the name of fashion... the way they dress... may directly
or indirectly have influence on the male students... like what they used to
say, that ‘women and money is the root of evil."
There were recurring references to transactional sex and
allegations that women students preferred ‘sugar daddies,’ echoing a dominant
media focus in Nigeria on the alleged “immorality” of women undergraduates.
Given such views, the residential hall authorities blamed gender-based violence
on the victims, holding women responsible for their own sexual harassment
because of their “indecent dressing.”
Women’s limited resistance
Women students occasionally contested male control of the
fellowship groups and the sexual double-standard. Those residing in one of the
co-ed halls, in a proactive move, joined a non-governmental organisation, War
against Rape and Sexual Harassment (WARSH) to fight cases of rape and sexual
harassment, and secured the support of male residents.
Women students also reported wanting better mentoring by
women lecturers and the women’s groups on campus. Some questioned the more
conservative agendas of student groups that were preoccupied with producing
“good wives and mothers to build the nation.”
Reflecting on the research
The perception of a gendered hierarchy in the religious
fellowships and student politics of the University of Ibadan was pervasive.
Such hierarchy runs contrary to the stated objective of the university to be an
equitable space. The statements of many of the women students in this study
denote a disturbing level of resignation to an unequal social status, and a
reluctance to exert some degree of agency to empower themselves in either
secular or religious contexts. There was also a disturbing regurgitation of
age-old stereotypes of women as quarrelsome; as less academically gifted than men;
as shallow thinkers and as malicious.
The popular attribution of such attitudes to ‘tradition,’
and the general preference for them rather than the ‘modernising’ atmosphere of
a university, suggests that both women and men students have internalised certain
gendered beliefs and practices and are unwilling to change them. This is
despite the fact that, as university students, they have been exposed to
technological innovations and a range of philosophical, political and social
theories.
However, we also found evidence of some contestations of
the gendered hierarchy in the secular spaces of the university, among hall
chairs and female activists. Here, there were remarks that indicate that women
can negotiate their relationships with their male friends and academic
colleagues. There were also calls for reviews of the university curriculum to
include entrepreneurial courses that could make women more employable and thus
less dependent on male partners.
Uncertainties about campus life and disillusionment about
national life have coalesced in the minds of women students into a state of
resignation and frustration. While the individual may feel powerless to effect
change, the university institution can restructure its policies and processes
to establish gender equality. This might be a painful evolution for a deeply
masculine institution; it will have to make deep changes in order to challenge
the restrictive social roles ascribed to women in what should be a
transformative environment.
This is an abridged version of an article first published
in Feminist Africa (Issue 8). Read the full article here.
*Author Abiola
Odejide is an Emeritus Professor of Communication Arts at the
University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where she also served as Deputy
Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs.