CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND WOMEN’S RIGHT A STUDY OF WIDOWHOOD RITES IN ANAMBRA STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The Universalist claims of feminism generally and of the international feminist movement in their eort particularly owes their intellectual origin among the grand narratives of Marxian philosophy on the economic subjugation of women supported the gender division of labour. Men and women are outlined dierently in patriarchal and capitalist societies based on their access to or denials of productive resources primarily based in each public sphere and personal sphere. “The character of a person is evaluated not by his conduct in family morals, but by his eiciency in work, by his intellect, his will, his usefulness to the State and Society” except for women, it is all about her loyalties and “display of “good morals” in sexual and family life”. Economic subjugation of women is impossible without the bourgeois hypocrisy and its narratives of moral values; a mechanism of control life, labour and society. Patriarchal cultural norms are made to uphold structures of power that are prejudicial towards the release of women generally and materialize within the goals of women’s right as human right in particular. In recent years the difficulty of ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights’ has increasingly gained prevalence and validity within the international community (Okin, 2014).

However, the decision for Women’s Universal Human Rights seems not to avoid issues and challenges, even from the feminist movement itself. The challenge for women’s rights as human rights is the question of ‘‘how will human rights be licensed in radically completely different societies without succumbing either to homogenizing universalism or the paralysis of cultural relativism (Coomaraswami, 2009). It suggests that the diversity of cultures in numerous societies stands as a threat to the human rights movement generally. One of the areas where cultural relativism comes to the forefront is women’s human rights problems in multicultural societies. In some instances, “culture” is employed as an evidence for explanation or an excuse for gender based violence so as to justify some harmful cultural practices and/or to get mitigation in some criminal justice cases. This point raises important questions about the role of “culture” in men’s management over women, in the form of violence against women (VAW) and the degree to which a “culture” ought to be respected or tolerated in multicultural societies, when it violates women’s human rights. Some feminists argue that if a “minority culture” perpetuates gender violence, it is better to allow them to become extinct instead of protecting them under the rubric of multiculturalism -or at least promote change so that they could catch up with the equality standards held in the “majority culture”. They claim that multiculturalism could be partly blamed for the legitimating of gender based violence. Others draw attention to the fact that no “culture” is exempt from gender based violence, though there might be changes in the form of violence against women in different “cultures”, and suggest that more thorough analyses should be done in order to understand the relation between cultural relativism and women’s right. In the context of these, the concept of cultural relativism is useful in discussing gender violence or widowhood rites in multicultural societies, particularly, in the cultural defense cases.

It will explain women’s right discussions in multicultural societies. Looking at the relationship between “multiculturalism” and “cultural relativism” and analyzing the way that cultural relativism approaches to “culture” and then suggests a more plausible account of culture. Lastly, it will criticize the cultural defense cases and discusses the challenges that cultural relativism poses in women’s right discussions. It concludes that although cultural relativism helps to understand “the contextual nature of any principles of justice”, it deters normative judgement about harmful cultural practises; it reduces culture to its partial representations and therefore obstructs important factors that contribute violence against women; it undermines women’s agency by constituting them as victims of “cultures” and it might articulate with “nationalist” and “racist” discourses by freezing group differences. In accordance with this, this research will also provide further thoughts on Nigeria by examining the implications of the framing “widow rites” as a matter of “tradition” or “custom” (töre).

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Debates on how to reconcile the conflict between human rights and harmful cultural practices have been evolving in the world for the last two decades (Sossou, 2015, De Gaay Fortman, 2011). In the face of the massive support for numerous international human right instruments that seek to combat all forms of discrimination and harmful traditional practices against women, practices such as widowhood rites are still persisting. By implication, cultural values tend to undermine the prospect of women’s rights. In the case of widowhood rites, these are mainly privately perpetrated on the ground of communal membership. Igbo membership revolves around maintenance of cultural and religious traditions. Across these wide ranging traditions, widows are subjected to patriarchal customary and religious laws and face problem of inheritance rights (Merry, 2012, Iwobi, 2008, Ewelukwa 2015). The underlying motivations for widowhood rites are linked to cultural belief and local cosmology that the widow is a prime suspect of her spouse’s death and that the widow would therefore need to prove her innocence to the family through these rituals. Another widowhood practice is that of levirate marriage where a sibling of the deceased husband re-marries the widow in order to maintain paternity for the widow’s children. But educational attainment, children’s approval, financial independence and religious beliefs of widows in Nigeria determine the acceptance of levirate marriage.

Still, a number of widows condone these practices and seem complacent because any attempt of non-compliance can perhaps claim their lives or that of their children (UN, 2011). Even in the public sphere, institutions and community norms condone the practices. This makes the rites hardly debated publicly. The travails of widows in Igbo land include a long period of incarceration during mourning, an obligatory poor standard of hygiene, deprivation of the husband’s property and maltreatment by his relatives, enforcement of persistent wailing and sitting beside the husband’s corpse. These directly have negative psychological, financial, sexual and social impacts on widows. Nowadays, widowhood rites oen make women to be dethroned, defaced, disentangled, defiled, denied, deprived, dispossessed and disinherited (Iwobi, 2008; Nwadinobi, 2011). The enormous discrimination and humiliating treatments that widows frequently encounter, in varying degrees of hardships, is a threat to the rights of women (widows) as recognized in international human rights conventions and treaties and in national legislation as well. Tensions existing between cultural practices and universal respect for women’s rights can, and must, be managed or proactively resolved (Ado, 2010). In applying and realizing these human rights norms in a particular economic, historical, social, political and cultural setting, context remains important (Arts, 2010, De Gaay Fortman, 2011). These tensions, between Universalist and relativist positions, have been qualified as a ‘trench war’ by Viane and Brems (as referred to in Arts, 2010). In the extreme, they resulted in a situation in which certain groups of women, specifically widows, are not adequately protected against harmful widowhood practices and have not been given the attention they deserve, as is the case across Nigeria. Similarly, Nigeria as a multicultural society is characterised by a plural legal system to preserve the traditional values of her diverse ethnic communities.