The problems and intersectional politics of “#BeingFemaleinNigeria”

Abstract

ABSTRACT In June 2015, Nigerian women on Twitter convened around the hashtag “#BeingFemaleinNigeria” (#BFIN) to represent their experiences, observations, and critiques of patriarchal oppression in Nigeria. This article parses the content and internal politics of #BFIN as a Nigerian feminist hashtag campaign. Given that there is no singular Nigerian female experience, and that experience is not unmediated, the article asks: as represented by participants in the #BFIN campaign, what are the issues involved in being a woman in Nigeria, and for whom exactly, for Nigerian women occupying what kinds of discursive-material subject positions? Based on a thematic and intersectional analysis of 700 #BFIN tweets, I argue that the predominant representations are of the voice, experiences, and concerns of a type of subject that I call “the empowered Nigerian woman,” an educated, capacious, and confident urban career woman belonging to the country’s higher socio-economic strata. The campaign made urgently important claims about mundane sexist attitudes and practices that impede this type of Nigerian woman. However, marked by a lack of intersectional consciousness, the predominant story of the campaign was unrepresentative of the problems and experiences of the vast majority of Nigerian women.