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All Journal Dialektika kontemporer Pinisi Journal of Social Science
Mary Julius Egbai
University of Calabar
Social Sciences Other

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Theorising Widowhood: Feminist Philosophical Perspectives on Widowhood Practices and the Politics of Inheritance in Southeastern Nigeria Mary Julius Egbai
Pinisi Journal of Social Science Vol 5, No 1 (2026): May
Publisher : Universitas Negeri Makassar

Show Abstract | Download Original | Original Source | Check in Google Scholar | DOI: 10.26858/pjss.v5i1.88379

Abstract

Widowhood practices in many African societies, including mourning rituals, property inheritance, and levirate marriage, have been the subject of extensive feminist critique. These practices have been condemned as patriarchal, oppressive, and in violation of women’s rights. However, the feminist philosophical literature on widowhood has often been framed in terms of a binary opposition between tradition and modernity, with tradition coded as oppressive and modernity as liberating. This paper argues that this binary is inadequate for understanding the moral complexity of widowhood practices. Drawing on the work of African feminist philosophers and on ethnographic studies of widowhood in southeastern Nigeria, the paper develops a nuanced analysis of widowhood that recognises both the genuine harms that some practices inflict and the ways in which widowhood can also be a site of women’s agency, solidarity, and resistance. It proposes a contextual feminist approach that evaluates widowhood practices not against an abstract standard of individual autonomy but against the concrete conditions of women’s lives. The paper contributes to feminist philosophy by demonstrating the need for culturally situated analyses of gender oppression that attend to the specific institutions, practices, and beliefs that shape women’s experiences.
The Ethics of Care and the Political Economy of Motherhood: A Feminist Philosophical Analysis of Maternal Labour in Contemporary Nigeria Mary Julius Egbai
Jurnal Ilmu Sosiologi Dialektika Kontemporer Vol 14, No 2 (2026)
Publisher : dialektika kontemporer

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Abstract

The ethics of care, developed by feminist philosophers such as Carol Gilligan and Joan Tronto, has made a powerful case for recognising care as a fundamental moral practice that has been systematically devalued in patriarchal and capitalist societies. However, the ethics of care literature has focused primarily on care relations in Western contexts, with less attention to the specific forms that care takes in African societies. This paper examines the ethics of maternal care in contemporary Nigeria, arguing that the political economy of motherhood in Nigeria reveals both the universal dimensions of care ethics and its specific cultural inflections. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Nigerian mothers and on Nigerian feminist scholarship, the paper analyses the moral dilemmas that mothers face in contexts of economic precarity, inadequate state support, and patriarchal family structures. It argues that the Nigerian case challenges the implicit universalism of Western care ethics and enriches the tradition by demonstrating how care is practised and valued in contexts where the boundaries between family, market, and state are configured differently. The paper proposes a contextualised ethics of care that is attentive to the specific political, economic, and cultural conditions under which care is given and received.
Beyond the Binary: African Feminist Critiques of Western Gender Theory and the Epistemology of Complementarity Mary Julius Egbai
Jurnal Ilmu Sosiologi Dialektika Kontemporer Vol 13, No 2 (2025): Juli – December 2025
Publisher : dialektika kontemporer

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Abstract

Western feminist theory has long been structured around the critique of patriarchy and the binary opposition of male and female. However, African feminist scholars have argued that this binary framework is inadequate for understanding gender relations in African societies, where pre-colonial gender systems were often characterised by complementarity rather than hierarchy. This paper examines the concept of gender complementarity in African feminist thought, drawing on the work of Ifi Amadiume, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, and Nkiru Nzegwu. It argues that the Western feminist insistence on a universal patriarchy has functioned as a form of epistemic violence, erasing the distinctive features of African gender systems and imposing an alien analytical framework. The paper proposes an epistemology of complementarity that recognises the fluidity and context-dependence of gender relations in African societies while remaining attentive to the real inequalities that women experience. It contributes to the decolonisation of feminist philosophy by centring African intellectual traditions as sources of theoretical innovation rather than as objects of Western analysis.
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