Towards Nonviolent Gender Relations in Africa

Abstract

Despite global efforts, gender-based violence continues to be witnessed in varying degrees around the world. The use of dialogue as an effective tool in mitigating violence and conflict situations around the world provides an inspiration to conceive the need to extend the scope of dialogue to the domain of male-female relationship, which is fast becoming too complex, sensitive, strained, and tempestuous. In this study, the relevance of dialogue for a violent-free culture in the context of gender relations is interrogated. This study maintains that a dialogic mode of male-female relationship would go a long way to mitigate the persistent cases of gender-based violence. In an exploratory approach, Leonard Swidler's understanding and principles of dialogue are used as a framework to demonstrate what an inter-gender dialogue would look like. It concludes that, as dialogue offers an interactive framework for mutual understanding of one another, an inter-gender dialogue is constitutive of the social intercourse, which the very concept of dialogue represents.