

























Abstract
This paper examines how women's participation in 
Nigeria politics creates negative popular narratives 
about women's political participation. It is generally 
believed that women involved in politics mirror shady 
sexual objectication.  This narrative engenders apathy 
among women who would have otherwise participated in 
politics. This narrative also reveals how Nigerian 
women's personal lives shape arguments about their 
political potentials and also show a deep continuous 
denigration of women as objects of sex and weak entities, 
and how these limit political participation among women. 
Using hermeneutical analysis, this paper seeks to 
understand and interpret these narratives in the 
construction of gender identity in Nigeria, the 
relationship between individual agency and personal 
encounters and the power of popular narrative in shaping 
political behaviour. Also, this analysis will broaden our 
understanding of Nigerian women's contributions to the 
development of politics in Nigeria.

SEX AND POLITICS: 
A HERMENEUTICAL ANALYSIS OF 

WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS IN NIGERIA

Philip EDEMA, Ph.D. 
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos Bells
philip.edema@augustineuniversity.edu.ng      

Malachy IGWILO, Ph.D.
Centre for Foundation Education 

University of Technology, Ota, Ogun State
migwilo@gmail.com

and



Key words: Hermeneutic, gendered identity, narratives, 
objectication, politics

 Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to look critically at the sexist and 
discriminatory dimensions of women's participation in politics in the 
Nigerian context. There are many types of sexist stereotypes that are 
often taken for granted to the extent that the social acceptance of these 
stereotypes forms the essential parts of the narratives about politics 
and women in politics. In a patriarchal society like Nigeria, women 
are often spoken of in relation to a man. You see, many people 
wishing to know whether a particular female politician is married and 
whether her husband has allowed her to be in politics or who is 
sponsoring her in this venture and also why they are sponsoring her. 
These types of questions are invasive and mirror the public 
perception of women in politics, and essentially saying that a woman 
cannot be in politics especially becoming a successful politician. 
Central to this public inquiry about a woman in politics is the idea that 
a woman in politics must be a sex toy to male politicians. No matter 
how successful a woman politician is, she is often seen as a harlot, a 
woman that used “bottom power” to get ahead. These social 
constructs need to be examined philosophically to ascertain their 
origins, what they say about society and how intellectual 
engagements will further understand these constructs to better 
understand women's participation in politics. Nigeria is a special case 
as there has always been a clamour for more women participation in 
politics, especially as there is an increased feminist consciousness 
among young women in Nigeria. However, there is no sign that as 
more women show interest in politics and participate, there will be a 
reduced stereotype against them. If anything has remained 
unchanged. People have continued to believe that a woman in politics 
is a slut, a wayward person, and an irresponsible person. Amidst all 
these prejudices, there is no concrete evidence to show that women in 
politics engage in sexual expeditions to get ahead. But this social 
myth persists given the overtly rough terrain, politics has become. So 
there is a need to examine these in order to get to the root sources of 

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 81



these beliefs.

Feminist Collective and Women Participation in Politics
In recent years discussions concerning women's rights and the lack 
thereof have become prevalent in the public space. The social media 
exacerbates these discussions and creates a form of women's 
collective in which we see increasingly women bonding together to 
uproot various biologically dependent sexist analyses that is 
prevalent in society. The women's conference in Beijing, which took 
place in 1995 served as an outpouring of a feminist collective which 
instilled a certain level of collective action as to what women must do 
in order to end the ostracism in public service participation. This 
conference invested great hope in the mass adoption of gender main 
streaming as a strategy for transforming human development through 
a more complementary gender role. This has borne fruits worldwide. 
More and more countries are living up to the afrmative action 
recommended by the Beijing conference and more and more 
discussions are done in positive light concerning women 
participating in politics.
 The Beijing conference represents solidarity among women, 
a collective for a radical reshaping of society in line with feminist 
conceptions. 'The concepts of feminist solidarity and collective 
action are founded on beliefs about the role of individuals in engaging 
with others to bring about radical, visionary change, standing and 

1acting together.'  This “acting together” as a collective, represents a 
strongly gendered dimension in women's lives and fosters social 
action that dovetails into political participation. This means women 
discussing their lives, analysing their shared experiences of injustice 
and oppression, and developing common goals. Fundamentally, it is 
about understanding and challenging gender-specic constraints on 
women's options, which prevent them from achieving their true 
potential. In gender and development literature on women's 
empowerment, collective association and action are depicted as 

1C. Sweetman, “Introduction, Feminist Solidarity and Collective Action” Gender 
and Development, Vol. 21, No.2, 2013, 217-22.

82 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



politically essential in supporting them to challenge male 
2

oppression.
 The push towards challenging male-centred oppressions 
bifurcate society into “us and them” and introduces a power nexus 
that is designed to challenge the current oppressive and sexist 
dimensions of women's struggles with men and society in general. 
The political struggles that ensure as soon as men-centred 
oppressions are confronted show a completely dysfunctional 
relations that exist in the male-dominated society which tends to 
intrumentalise the women and objectify them as tools in the hands of 
men. This mentality 'points out the complex disadvantage that 
women face, not only from gender inequality, but from a combination 
of other identity-based forms of discrimination. They face the fear of 
losing their livelihoods, of violent reprisals, and of losing their means 
of survival by alienating those who give them the means to eke out an 

3
existence, while exploiting them.
 Therefore, the feminist collective is not only ghting for an 
equitable society, it is ghting for its own survival in a male-
dominated construction. In its more radical form, the feminist 
collective is not about some form of modication of the patriarchal 
system characterized by power, competition, dominance, and 
hierarchy, used in oppressing women; it is geared towards its 

4
complete elimination.  To eliminate this entails a radical modication 
of the biological underpinnings of women's oppression which has 
long held that women can't obtain some form of a balancing act in 
society as long as the biology is perceived as the dening factor in the 
understanding of women. According to Firestone, the sexual 
imbalance of power was biologically based and is fundamentally 
described as: 1. Women throughout history (before birth control) 

2N. Kabeer,  'Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment', in Naila Kabeer, 
Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the MDGs: A Handbook for 
Policymakers and Other Stakeholders, London: Commonwealth Secretariat/ 
Ottawa: IDRC/CDRI, 2003, 169-196.
3C.Sweetman, “Introduction, Feminist Solidarity and Collective Action”,  222.
4R. Tong, “Feminist thought: A comprehensive introduction”, Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press., 1989, 16.

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 83



have been at the mercy of their biology (menstruating, pregnant, 
giving birth, and breastfeeding) making them dependent upon males 
for survival. 2. Human infants are dependent for a long time after 
birth, limiting their mothers' options. 3. This basic mother/child 
interdependency has existed in some form in every society, past or 
present, and thus shapes the psychology of women and infants 4. The 
reproductive differences between the sexes led to the rst division of 
labour based on gender, which is at the origin of all further divisions 
into economic and cultural classes and cases (i.e., the origin of all 
discriminations). Thus, the inequality between men and women can 
be traced to the human body and to the women's biologic imperative 

 5
for childbearing and child-rearing.
 The feminist collective, therefore, centres on accepting this 
biological imperative and then modifying society to ignore the 
biological and existential predicament and focus on the humanity of 
women. This will require a radical exorcism of society to the extent 
that the biological underpinnings of gender-based discrimination 
must now collapse. 
 To achieve this collapsing of the biological imperatives that 
feed the patriarchal society, the surest way for the feminist collective 
is to make inroads towards political participation with the view 
towards engendering social change through this participation. To 

6
participate in politics, feminists have rejected the formal/informal  

7
notions of political participation.  It is generally believed that the 
informal sphere of political participation has to do with grassroots 
activism where disempowered citizens easily participate; and this is 
where women are most effective. The formal political sphere is 
regarded as where “real” politics takes place and where few women if 

5S. Firestone,  The dialectic of sex: The case for feminist revolution. New York: 
Morrow books, 1970,  45.
6N. Naples and M. Desai,  “Women's Local and Translocal Responses:  an 
Introduction to the Chapters” in Nancy Naples and Manisha Desai (eds.) Women's 
Activism and Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2002, 11-33.
7F. Miraftab,  “Invited and Invented Spaces of Participation: Neoliberal Citizenship 
and Feminists' Expanded Notion of Politics”. Wagadu, Volume 1, 2004, 1-7.

84 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



any, can venture to. The feminist collective counters these binary 
assumptions and insist that both the conceptual formal and informal 
spheres are viable political arenas where women can participate and 
shape society. 
 However, a simple numerical expansion of women in politics 
may not translate into the effective representation of feminist 
collectives' interests in the development of policy-making which can 
lead to the collapsing of patriarchy. It cannot be assumed that women 
politicians are necessarily committed to representing women's 
interests when they join politics. Indeed, few of them will have 
succeeded in politics by promoting a feminist platform in a male-

8
dominated political sphere.  To join politics, women collectively 
initially ignore the thorny issues of gender and simply focus on the 
very idea that women ought to be in politics.  Political participation 
on the platform of transforming society to collapse patriarchal 
stereotypes and promote equality will be so problematic that it can be 
counter-effective. These kinds of topics can be profoundly 
threatening to men's privileges, individually and collectively, and 
unsurprisingly arouse considerable resistance. At stake in 
considerations of developmental democracy from a gender 
perspective, then, is whether democratic institutions can achieve 
enough autonomy from dominant gender interests to challenge male 
privileges and promote the policies necessary for this kind of social 

9
change.  Women joining politics, banks on kick-starting discussions 
that can engender such autonomy so that in the long run gender-based 
bias or biologically dependent bias will be a thing of the past. But 
given the conditions and the deep-rooted stereotypes in society, a 
woman in politics is regarded, by and large, a bad idea.

Sexual Lives and Political Women
When women do join politics, they face myriad accusations and 
condescension of the society including from women themselves. 

8A. M. Goetz, “Women in Politics & gender equity in policy: South Africa & 
Uganda”, Review of African Political Economy, 25:76, 1998, 241-262.
9Ibid.

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 85



There is a general belief that women in politics are of easy virtue and 
could not have gotten far in politics without granting sexual favours 
to men who promote them or those who sponsor them nancially. 
According to comments from Alliance for Africa on a workshop 
about sexual harassment, more women do not enter politics because 
of sexual harassment or perceptions of it. The participants, especially 
the women, maintained that it was because of the issue of sexual 
harassment that many women are deprived and discouraged in 
politics. They said, “even the men who are not politicians do not 
allow their wives to participate in the game of politics because it is 

10assumed here that women in politics lack virtue.”  Women 
11

themselves agree that politics is a 'dirty game.' 

 According to Ugwuegede: 

In Nigeria, women who are actively participating in 
poli t ics are seen and treated as free women 
(prostitutes/wayward) of easy virtues, stubborn people, 
whores, too domineering, cultural rebellions, etc. It is 
observed that during the campaign, the political 
opponents (mostly men) use the alleged loose moral 
standing of these women against them and often insult 
them directly in public. Thus, they are often subjected to 
public ridicule and are socially stigmatized by both men 
and women. The use of negative labeling; derogatory 
names; abusive language and expressions to describe 
Nigerian women in politics discourage many of them 

10Alliance for Africa,(no date) “Sexual harassment among others, a continued 
struggle for Women who participate in Nigerian Politics” Seen at  
https://alliancesforafrica.org/sexual-harassment-among-others-a-continued-
struggle-for-women-who-participate-in-nigerian-politics/   assessed 30th May 
2019.
11D. T. Agbalajobi, “Women's participation and the political process in Nigeria: 
Problems and prospects” African Journal of Political Science and International 
Relations Vol. 4(2), 2010, 075-082.

86 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



12
from active participation in the nation's politics.

This is clearly a representation of the common views of women in 
politics in Nigeria and it is a candidate's idea of a patriarchal society. 
It is believed that since a woman is a weaker sex, and is dependent on 
men, there is no way she can muster the resources required to make 
headway into politics. It has to be through granting sexual favours to 
her sponsors and being ready to “sleep” with any supporter of 
important repute. It is believed that without this, a woman has no way 
of making it in politics. 
 There is ample evidence that this mindset is rife in the 
political sphere helping to fuel this misogynistic mindset. Prominent 
female politicians are always presented on social media and even in 
mainstream media as being sex seeking females. There are 
accusations and a counter-accusation that tends to fuel this well-
established myth. For example, Badmus related the well-publicized 
accusation made by a female politician against a male politician. This 
accusation is seen as a norm and the woman is only making it public 

13because the affair fell through.  What this entails is that women's 
participation in politics in Nigeria has something to do with sex. The 
sex lives of the women involved are presented in public and 
judgments are passed on to them. Even the state of their families is x-
rayed. Narratives arise about most women politicians. It is said that 
the women dominate their husbands to the extent that their husbands 
cannot do anything to prevent their career even though the husbands 
know that politics is a “dirty game”. The narratives make the 
husbands victims of powerlessness. The husbands cannot say much 
since their wives' have other more powerful men than they.  Social 
media and public opinion are riddled with such stories. From this, it is 
taken for granted that successful female politicians got there through 
having sexual affairs with male politicians or the powers that pilot 

12N. P. Ugwuegede, “Challenges to Women Active Participation in Politics in 
Nigeria” Sociology and Anthropology 2(7): 2014, 284-290.
13See, B. “Anisulowo accuses PDP leaders of seeking sexual favors from her, 
others” in Nigerian Tribune, Wednesday, 28th February 2007, p.1.

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 87



political affairs. Central to this urban myth is the idea of 'godfather'. 
In Nigerian politics, the 'godfather' is the person that pays the bill. He 
is the nancial progenitor of the political project. He picks from 
among the people interested in holding various political positions and 
sponsors them nancially so that they would be able to scale the 
hurdles of politics. The godfather provides the background and 
inuence needed to ensure a successful political career. 
 Godfatherism is not strange in Nigerian sociological realities. 
It is a long-accepted tradition that a younger person should learn and 
prosper under the tutelage and support of a more experienced patron. 
Godfatherism is also used to connote the power and inuence of 
people who are politically relevant and savvy in deciding who gets 
nominated to contest elections and who eventually wins the election. 
Godfathers are highly politically mobile and can sway political 
support to the political party and/or candidate behind which they 

14
throw their political weight using various means.
 According to Albert Olawale, 'a person of lesser social status 
attaches himself to another person, usually of higher status, for 
support, which could be social or economic. The godfather gets 
something in return from the adopted son for the transactional 
relationship'. These godfathers are seen in the social and economic 
spheres in Nigeria and have now been transferred to the political 

15
spheres.  In the political sphere; it gets tricky given the strange 
dimensions it has taken. Most godfathers demand the near-
impossible from their clients. Albert Olawale also mentioned that 
'giving of kola by a client to his patron is also not strange. What is 
probably strange is the transposition of this social or economic 
system into the political arena and also the ridiculous nature of what 
patrons now ask from their clients as compensation for providing 
them with 'brokerage services'. The present-day godfatherism is a 

14N. Bassey, and E. Enetak, “Godfatherism and Good Governance in Nigeria: An 
appraisal of Nigeria's Fourth Republic” Journal of Social and Policy, Vol.3, No4, 
2014, 137-143.
15I. O. Albert,  “Explaining “Godfatherism” in Nigerian politics” African 
Sociological Review / Revue Africaine de Sociologie, Review 9, Vol. 2, 2014, 79-
105.

88 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



16
primordial tradition taken to a criminal extent'.
 Most male politicians try to give 'kola' and other gratications 
to their godfathers. In the case of women, it can indeed be tricky as it 
is believed that the 'kola' given by the females to their own godfathers 
is nothing but sex even though additional nancial incentives are also 
imperative if the female wins a 'juicy ofce'. In the public narratives, 
we see that it is taken for granted that the client will always 'settle' his 
godfather with nancial gratication while the females settle the 
godfather with sexual favours. 
 Given the dimensions of these narratives about sex being the 
main currency when a woman joins politics, the women themselves 
have shunned politics for this very reason. Many women agree with 
the narratives and in order to preserve their integrity, they avoid 
partisan politics. 

Hermeneutics of Women Political Participation: Towards a 
Critical Understanding 
Hermeneutics has become one of the alternative voices of 
contemporary philosophy used in assessing the human intellect and 
social conditions. It has long become the mainstream in philosophy 
and has garnered profound inuences. Hermeneutics has once again 
come into use as a response to the totalizing and the perennial nature 
of epistemology which seeks to assert that knowledge and 
understanding are indeed a-historical and apodictic entities. But 
given the rise of postmodernism and also the consequences of 
Gettier's counter examples, hermeneutics have become a viable 
alternative voice in bypassing the protracted debate about traditional 
epistemology and Kantian ideas of epistemology which has 

17characterized twentieth-century philosophy.  According to Maddox:  

“The term ' hermeneutics' was originally used to 
designate a classical discipline that formulated rules for 
correctly interpreting texts. Early forms of this discipline 
can be found in biblical studies, philology and 

16Ibid.
17E Gettier, “Is Justied True belief Knowledge,” Analysis, Vol. 23, 1963, 121-123.

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 89



jurisprudence. The philosophical discussion of 
hermeneutics, which began in the nineteenth century, 
likewise initially engaged in the development of rules for 
proper interpretation. As the discussion developed, 
however, its attention shifted to the more basic question of 
the conditions of the very possibility of understanding. 
The distinctive characteristic that emerged in this 
'hermeneutic' discussion of understanding was a 
rejection of classical Cartesian and Kantian 
epistemology. Indeed, hermeneutics has more or less 
taken the place of epistemology for these philosophers. To 
be sure, they usually refuse to identify hermeneutics with 
epistemology, but this is due to the empiricist and 
reductionist connotations which they sense in the latter 
term. There are essentially two problems which 
hermeneutic philosophers have with traditional 
epistemology. First, they disagree with the reduction of 
the entire cognitive process to a single model drawn 
basically from the natural sciences - i.e. empirical 
observation. Second, they reject the a-historical 
conception of the knower as one who stands outside of 

18that which is known and imposes meaning upon it”.

Critical hermeneutics are used to assess tradition in order to correct it 
based on human interests. In other words, each human idea, in this 
case, women's participation in politics must be examined as a 
historical process that has arisen to enhance human life. So its 
contours and dimensions must be examined to show that there are no 
personal and sectional appeals inherent in it since if there are such 
aws, it cannot then serve the human's interests. So critical 
hermeneutics are humanistic in essence and seeks to use 
philosophical arguments to remove merely pragmatic or existential 
components from ideas and enshrine in the idea progress for 

18R. Maddox, “Contemporary Hermeneutic Philosophy and Theological Studies”, 
Religious Studies, 21, 1985, 517-529.

90 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



humanity if that is possible. The major hermeneutical theorist of this 
idea was Jurgen Habermas. Habermas articulated the fact that not all 

19 tradition is acceptable or desirable. Therefore, the project of 
hermeneutics is to correct tradition, in this case, women's 
participation in politics. Correcting it means inculcating 
emancipatory cognitive interest in it. In some cases due to historical 
developments, in some concepts or traditions, it is impossible to have 
an intersubjective correction of a concept or idea so the concept or 
idea is discarded as being sectional.
 The push for the enthronement of women's participation in 
politics has permeated the world unmolested and has become the key 
idea for the understanding of today's socio-economic and rights 
landscape. But the desire for women to participate in politics 
enthrones a binary position among those who want it and those who 
reject it. The fact of this debate arises from the cultural perceptions in 
traditional societies carried over into modern life and which does not 
augur well with modern life. It is believed in most traditional 
societies in Nigeria that women are to be seen not heard and women 
are as a matter of biology weak. This particular mindset has continued 
to entrench sexist dependent stereotypes that limited general progress 
that women can participate in. Its metaphysics remains superiority of 
the male sex. The conquering spirit entrenched in our understanding 
of the male sex continues to enrich the males and pauperizing the 
female sex making the females mostly depend ent on the male. This 
pauperization creates a hybrid stranger who is outside the protable 
sphere of human development. The hybrid stranger or the female sex 
is given crumbs from the table of our patriarchal society since the 
males decide where the resources and integral existence goes to. 
These crumbs are used to create a façade as if the exclusion of women 
is in proper order for society. The patriarchal society continues to 
create more and more stereotypes pushing these from one generation 
to another to safeguard a society where female participation is muted. 
The continuous presence of sexism and stereotyping in society 
militates against integral development and progress and sabotages  

19Ibid.

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 91



the complete development of the female sex.
 According to OECD, the fact that women are not given the 
full power to realize themselves in a nondiscriminatory environment, 
society is worse off. The more women are not empowered, the more 

20 
society is poor economically. Apart from this, men suffer too 
because (as) conforming to masculine roles of competitive and 
ambitious self-seeking can put pressure on them and deprive them of 
joys that can come from parenting and having intimate respectful 
relationships. Stereotypes and gender discriminations resulting 
therefrom having high costs in terms of development, impeded 
democracy, human rights denied and peace and security 

21
endangered.
 So, the critical question that arises is; do women participation 
in politics serves as a tool for the progress of humanity? Here 
progress is a moral concept that represents a holistic advancement of 
humanity based on sound morality. The new and emerging concept 
that seeks to deal with the obvious ostracization of women by the 
patriarchal society is offered by this paper as a De-feminization. De-
feminization is indeed a concept that has at its core a counter-
movement away from the radical insistence of radical feminists 
towards a more diffused social engagement. In other words, the 
feminine is redened not just from the point of view of biology, but 
from the point of view of progressive and necessary contributions. 
Radical feminism and the general feminist collective impose on 
society a mandatory acceptance of women in politics without waiting 
for society to accept women as political leaders based on organic and 
intellectual development. The current stereotypes of our patriarchal 

20OECD Observer, “Fighting poverty means ghting sexism” Seen at
http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/5556/Fighting_poverty_means_
ghting_sexism.html, Assessed 30th May 2019.
21UN Women (2011) “Countering Gender Discrimination and Negative Gender 
Stereotypes: Effective Policy Responses” seen at
http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2011/7/countering-gender-
discrimination-and-negative-gender-stereotypes-effective-policy-responses, 

th,assessed May 30  2019.

92 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



society are mythical in nature and arise from the various perspectives 
about power and control. The society demands that men ought to 
always be in control of women. This mindset can change if there is a 
more diffusive understanding of the female sex. The female sex is not 
seen just from the feminine perspective, but from the contribution, it 
can offer based on her special nature and from her special 
experiences. Hence de-feminization. 
 De-feminization as a contribution of this paper is not seeking 
to remove the feminine nature from reality, but to embed it with the 
male as living being-together. Women are not exclusively female 
given the interactions that embody them daily. So the idea of 
exclusivity, exclusive female sex bereft of any male dimension in the 
intellect is mute. Men and women's history intertwine and this 
produces a special knowledge about life and when this understanding 
is harnessed. According to Shetler, 'men and women keep and 
transmit historical knowledge by the paths that they walk each day 
and the outside/inside positions that they occupy in the imagined 
male and female spaces that permeate their world. These sets of 
knowledge signify separate, though interdependent realms of 

22
authority deployed by men and women in their everyday routines'.

Conclusion
This paper is about women's participation in politics and the 
difculties they face and how if women are truly allowed in politics, 
they can offer special improvements and progress for Nigeria as a 
country. The current difculties faced by women arise from an 
entrenched stereotype that derogates women's sexual lives mostly 
based on biology. Women as the receiver sex in a sexual encounter 
have been exploited to produce a highly damaging urban myth 
concerning their participation in politics. This is happening in the 
face of the demands made by the feminist collective who demands 

22J. B. Shetler,  “The Gendered Spaces of Historical Knowledge: Women's 
Knowledge and Extraordinary Women in the Serengeti District, Tanzania” The 
International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2003), 2003,  
283-307.

Sex and Politics: A Hermeneutical Analysis...    | 93



that women should as a matter of course or law participate in politics. 
This feminist demand has become inuential to the extent that some 
countries made it law and push women into politics without any 
consideration for the current perceptions of the female sex. Most 
women in politics are seen as lacking virtue or being easy. This 
mindset has been exploited to prevent a full acceptance of the 
demands of the feminist collective. This paper is of the view that 
women participating in politics are highly desirable idea as long as a 
new understanding of the female is gradually visited on society, 
especially our patriarchal society. This concept of de-feminization is 
introduced to mirror a new woman understood from the perspective 
of embodying society. Given the specialness of women, especially in 
their daily intellectual encounters with the male, it is believed that 
women offer a special kind of knowledge and presence and these can 
be used in politics for the progress of society. 

94 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   


