African Women 
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| Title: | Dissenting daughters? Gender politics and civil society in a militarized State |
| Author: | Mama, Amina |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Periodical: | CODESRIA Bulletin |
| Issue: | 3-4 |
| Pages: | 29-36 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subjects: | political systems military regimes women's organizations |
| Abstract: | Through a series of high profile programmes mounted by a female oligarchy made up of the wives of military men, the regimes of Generals Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) and Sani Abacha (1993-1998) have appropriated and neutralized the potentially subversive and inherently antimilitarist notion of women's liberation espoused by the international feminist movement. Although the undemocratic and unconstitutional nature of the power and influence wielded by military wives in Nigeria has been the subject of some criticism, the evidence suggests that neither the prodemocracy movement nor women's organizations have confronted the gender politics of the regime. Initially militant Nigerian women's organizations have become more instrumentalist than oppositional, stretching the boundaries between pragmatism and opportunism. Amongst women's organizations and mainstream civil society alike, complicity appears to be prevailing, although there is a question of degree. At one extreme lie State-sponsored groups like WEAA (Women Earnestly Ask for Abacha) and the pro-establishment National Council of Women's Societies (NCWS), at the other organizations like WIN (Women in Nigeria). The Nigerian situation suggests a conceptualization of both State and civil society as terrains of contestation and negotiation, the production sites of (gender) discourses, each with the potential to influence the other. Bibliogr. |
