On Friday February 7, 2025, NOG member Elizabeth Omoruyi will defend her PhD project ‘Women Oppressing Women: An Intersectional Reading of Women Authors in Nigeria’.
In her dissertation, Elizabeth examines women to women discrimination and oppression in the selected texts of three Nigerian female writers: Zulu Sofola, Buchi Emecheta and Bunmi Julius-Adeoye. Women sometimes have been known to discriminate and/or oppress their fellow women in different spheres of life and this research highlights it by using intersectionality as a theoretical framework to reveal that women can discriminate and oppress other women via certain categories like age/generation, social class/status, educational achievement, ethnicity and race.
When examining women’s oppression, the role that some women play in the discrimination and oppression of fellow women is often overlooked that is why in this dissertation, Elizabeth discusses the different ways that women discriminate and oppress other women. In her analysis of literary works of the Nigerian female authors selected for this study, she finds that women themselves are sometimes responsible for discriminating and oppressing other women. In cultural practices that are intended to cause harm to women like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and harmful widowhood rites, women are often the perpetrators of these acts.
In examining women discrimination/oppression of fellow women, Elizabeth lays emphasis on the narrative of physical and psychological violence and oppression perpetuated against women by fellow women. As the selected works for study reflect current realities in Nigeria, she highlights the issues commonly found in different areas of the country like parents investing in the education of male children over the girl child as it is a common understanding that women have little need of western education. However, a common occurrence in the texts analysed is that while there are some women characters who oppress other women/girls, there are also women who support downtrodden women. This intensifies the fact that growth can only occur when women uplift one another
The conclusion of Elizabeth’s disseration is that when women oppress other women, they are further engendering patriarchy, which in turn negates women’s fight against gender inequality.
Details PhD Defense
Date: Friday, February 7, 2025
Time: 10:15-11:15h.
Location: Hybrid. Live: Senate Hall, Utrecht University Hall, or click here to attend online.
Title: Women Oppressing Women: An Intersectional Reading of Women Authors in Nigeria
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Sandra Ponzanesi & Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen
