The various ethnic groups in Nigeria have classified women and men in particular gender roles. In fact, the values, norms, and symbols infusing each community translate the physical underpinning of sexual differences into the socially relevant categories of feminine and masculine gender.
Arising from this is the fact that feminity has become synonymous with domesticity, while masculinity is associated with mobility, power, superiority and opportunities in the supra domestic sphere.
Challenging on the whole therefore, is true of contemporary Nigeria:
1. Patriarchy and the male ideology of dominance prevails; then dominate women and consider them as property.
2. Men are entitled to several wives as well as concubines where as women are still restricted to pre-marital fidelity.
3. All of most important occupations are male perogatives and women are confined to house work and to helping the male folks.
4. The vale of women is determined by their ability to bear children.
5. Men have greater latitude and opportunity.
6. Men control property and pass it unto their sons.
7. Men have more rights in every facets of the society
8. Women are regarded as unequipped for management and control of public and private affairs, though they may be loved and received within the family and may be accorded a surprising degree of informal authority.
It is the culturally determined and prescribed discriminatory practices which are reinforced by other factors inherent in the society that breeds the marginalization, oppression and consequently give rise to the exploitation of women by men.
Against the back drop of their disadvantaged position in the configuration of gender relations and the culturally established power matrix women in Nigeria are oppressed and exploited as producers and reproduces of labour in addition to being oppressed and exploited to as a class.
Another important aspect of the oppression of women and one that has attracted the sharp criticism off feminists and scholars generally is the issues of violence against our women folk. This covers rape, abduction, forced sexual intercourse, incest female circumcision and general domestic violence.
On the basis if the above analyses, we submit that in Nigeria, culture occupies a special place in the Gender Question as a whole. Therefore, any strategy put in place to address the disequilibrium in cross-gender relations that is oblivious of this fact is bound to fail. Indeed, in the attempt to resolve the Gender Question in our society, there is the need to put into critical and objective context the role of culture in this equation. The time has come for us to understand this dimension of cross-gender relations in our society and act accordingly rather than continue with the sterile past attempts at proffering solutions to the problem without first diagnosing the ailment.
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