CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

The practice of purdar is an extreme form of the denial of participation rights of women. More generally in Nigeria, women face an array of barriers to their full participation in various aspects of social life due to entrenched cultural attitudes, which put girls at disadvantage in education and discourage or hinder women’s participation in various types of employment as well as in politics and public life. Women in Northern Nigeria were excluded from voting until well after Independence, due to the depth of cultural prejudice against their involvement in public life. A few women like Hajia Gambo Sawaba and Ladi Shehu distinguished themselves as prominent members of the Northern Element Progressive Union (NEPU), but they paid dearly for their struggle for women’s political rights. Hajia Gambo Sawaba achieved the distinction of becoming the most frequently jailed woman in modern Nigerian history, being imprisoned 17 times during the First Republic (Shawalu, M. 1990). This overt denial of political rights to women only ended in 1976, when a decree was finally promulgated by the Military Government formally allowing women in the Northern States to vote and be voted for.

Women who occupy little more than half of the total population and are supposed to be the vehicle of change and modernization of society, definitely should occupy the largest space in the media. Women are becoming more and more assertive of their right with the global feminist movement; their issue got a special agenda in the media world following the United Nations’ proclamation of the year 1975 as International Women’s Year. Nigerian women are not an exception of the movement. The government of Nigeria should reaffirm its commitment to respect women’s right to information and increase the participation and access of women to wider articulation. Many nations of the world came together at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly in June 2000 in Beijing, China and reaffirmed their equality. There are some of the basic principles of good governance upon which democracy is based on. Thomas (2000) asserts: as the largest consumer of both electronic and print media, the women in any political and social system should remain as the most conscious and well informed group whose roles as the reticule of change, development and modernization is particularly notable. The women, as the subject of socialization have to play crucial role in inculcating democratic values, faith and belief, revolt against the patriarchal regimes and work for the realization and promotion of human rights and gender equality. This is possible only when media in the knowledge century try to convert knowledge into power for gender equality.