‘Womanhood on the Streets’: African Women at the Crossroads of Religious Violence and Social Justice

Abstract

The proliferation of religious extremism and religiously motivated violence in Africa is increasingly eliciting scholarly interest though there remains a deficiency in the feminisation of such discourse. Nigeria has endured the explosion of such religious extremism and violence, eliciting mass civil unrest, particularly in the last two decades. Often women are especially at risk of victimisation, enduring diverse forms of human rights violations including rape, kidnap, assault, torture and murder. However, their participation and instrumentalisation in orchestrating such acts of violence complexifies the relationship between gender and religiously motivated violence in Nigeria. In addition, the exploration of their efforts to form part of the nexus of public discourse critiquing religious extremism and violence in the public sphere within scholarly discourse leaves room for more to be said, especially with respect to Nigerian and African women. Through the juxtaposition of two such women-led efforts, this paper seeks to engage contemporary scholarship on the intersection of religion, violence and gender by examining the resources Nigerian and African women utilise in their mobilising quest towards demanding accountability and justice for the oppressed. As postcolonial beings whose lived experiences are often rendered through a prejudiced Western lens, this paper will argue that Nigerian and African women's pursuits for social justice are often constructed in spaces of duality where their ability to operate within and through seemingly contesting variables is affirmed, such that their agency is firmly asserted and remains uncontested.