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Khaki in the Family: Gender Discourses and Militarism in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Amina Mama
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Abstract:

The Nigerian military state has used gender politics for its own ends, exploiting opportunities afforded by international concern with women. The highly publicized program for rural women enabled the regime of Babangida to gain international credibility. The Abacha regime did not seek or win international support, but sought to upstage the gender politics of their predecessors locally by mounting more broadly populist programs which promised benefits to “the family” and further reinscribed women within highly limited reproductive roles. Because Nigerian civil society has been so reluctant to engage with gender, the military have been able to appropriate the terrain they refer to as “women development” for their own ends. Through a series of high profile programs, they have neutralized the potentially subversive and inherently antimilitarist notion of women's liberation, and propagated a gender politics which normalizes military rule.

Resumé:

Resumé:

L'état militaire nigérian a fait usage, à ses propres fins, de la politique de gender en exploitant les possibilités offertes par le souci que suscitent, sur le plan international, les questions de la femme. Hautement médiatisé, le programme pour la femme rurale a permis à Babangida de gagner une crédibilité au niveau international. Le régime de Achaba n'a ni cherché ni obtenu l'accord international; il avait plutôt comme but d'éclipser la politique de gender de son prédécesseur sur le plan local, en mettant sur pied des programmes largement populistes qui promettaient des avantages à la famille. En définitive, ces programmes ont confiné davantage les femmes dans des rôles très limités de reproduction. Du fait que la société civile nigériane n'a pas voulu faire face au problème de gender, l'armée a été à même de s'approprier le domaine qu'ils appellent “développement de la femme” à leurs fins propres. A travers d'éminents programmes, ils ont neutralisé le caractère potentiellement subversif et la nature antimilitariste de l'idée de la libération de la femme et ils ont vulgarisé une politique de gender qui normalise le pouvoir militaire.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , September 1998 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1998

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