How patriarchal power structures undermine women’s empowerment and gender equality

Abstract

Ever since the United Nations recognised and included it as part of its sustainable development goals, gender equality has become a global concern as women’s empowerment outreach programs and policies have dominated everywhere in the world, especially places where patriarchy is negatively impacting on the output of women in contributing to political and social development. In the quest to entrench women’s empowerment in patriarchy-dominated settings like Nigeria, a country with half of its population being women, there has been a call to address patriarchy and structural issues (Onwutuebe 2019:1). In order to answer the question, how does patriarchy undermine gender equality and women’s empowerment in Nigeria, the first part generally addresses gender equality and patriarchy in Nigeria; the second part concentrates on women’s empowerment as a tool for ensuring women’s economic and political participation in Nigeria: the progress and setbacks and the last part dwell on how patriarchal structure is negatively impacting on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The second part discusses UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2018–2021 and how it will help empower women in Nigeria. Some crucial areas where patriarchy get inspiration – religion and tradition – are looked at in the third section as these can be considered significant inspiration of “patriarchal manifesto”. In this vein, this section also looks into the connection between undermining women’s empowerment and the role of religious and traditionally backed patriarchy.