The Socio-Cultural Church: A Determinant of Women’s Rights in Nigeria

Abstract

Debates about women’s rights and the challenges of social exclusivity, gender inequality and human insecurity, are front-burner issues in discourses on the sociopolitical and socioeconomic landscapes in Nigeria. Despite constituting about fifty percent (50%) of the population of most modern societies, women are traditionally shortchanged at negotiation tables. This premise is fundamental to evaluating the threats posed to viable debates on the rights of women as ‘minority’ groups in society. Unfortunately, the church under the influence of the socio-culture, inadvertently establishes their pared positions through the misinterpretation of some doctrinal bases of Christianity, which allow rationality give way to ‘more superior’ extrapolations that hamper in-depth introspections on reasons for biblical positions and consequences of actions. Riggs’ fused-prismatic-diffracted model of society describes the processes capable of sustaining this dire situation as embedded in ‘non-administrative criteria’. Data for the study were collected using semi-structured questionnaires and unstructured interviews. Purposive and random sampling procedures were utilized in deriving the sample population from Christian-only populations. Pearson’s Bivariate Correlation, multiple regression analysis and theme-coding were employed to analyse the questionnaire and interview responses. The findings revealed that the socio-culture is a major determinant of the interpretations of biblical positions and teachings by churches, thereby upholding church agency as contributory to the rise in gender inequality, discrimination and domestic abuse cases in Nigeria. Strategies for abdicating the risks of domestic abuse and mitigating the impacts on women’s rights in Nigeria, were proffered.