Volume 11 (2019): Edition 1 (June 2019)

This paper will examine why the feminist critique to human rights is still relevant even in so-called ‘progressive’ Western societies today, with specific attention to sexual violence. The first part of this essay will explore the feminist critique concerning the public/private sphere, paying attention to its historical emergence, and effect on the progression of women’s rights in the area of sexual violence. This will be followed by a discussion of what has formally been done to address the issue, and a general discussion on shortcomings that exist today, with particular attention to the Larry Nassar case in the United States.

The importance of teaching self-determination skills to all students is extremely important, but it especially vital that all adolescent males learn these skills as they seem to struggle the most with self-advocacy, communication skills, and self-efficacy. This article will focus on many facets of self-determination and will present interventions specifically for adolescent males.

The paper analyzed dynamics that shaped disproportionate academic positions occupied by men and women at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Nigeria between 2003/2004 and 2013/2014 academic sessions. It demonstrated that disparity between men and women in academic positions is not natural but social. The gap is, thus, susceptible to social intervention. The paper identified Carnegie Project as a major interventionist project that has influenced the positions occupied by women in academic positions within the period under review. Before, during and after method was used to establish the influence of the project on gender gap. The data used for this study were obtained from the Budgeting and Monitoring Unit and Centre for Gender and Social policies Studies of the University. The data were summarized using descriptive statistics and while inferential statistics such as Analysis of Variance (AVOVA) was used to make deductions. The results showed that out of 1,041 academic staff in 2003/2004 academic session, 876 were males (84.0%) while 165 (16.0%) were females. The 2007/2008 academic session had a higher proportion of 22% showing an increase of 6% within a period of six years. The 2009/2010 academic session recorded the highest proportion of female academics in the University with 24%. The periods 2007/2008 to 2009/2010 were the peak of the Carnegie programme when there were female scholarships and Fellowships and when a lot of sensitization and motivational workshops were held for female students and female staff. However, by 2012/2013 the percentages of female academic staff declined from 24% in 2009/2010 to 16%. Four factors were found to have accounted for this change. These were the stoppage of female scholarship programmes, awareness campaigns on radios, television and OAU—Carnegie Gender Equity Initiative Bulletin, sensitization and motivational workshops. These results greatly affected the female staff and students whose ambitions were to pursue Ph.D. programme. The paper suggested therefore, that there is need for the university to put in place structures that will enable female academic to develop themselves and thus reduce gaps in employment of academic posts. There is also need to encourage a gender friendly environment for staff and revisit the Sensitization and awareness programmes / motivational workshops. The influence of the project began to be significant on the gender gap three years after its inception.

Language, gender and power are major concepts in many academic disciplines. These concepts are expressed in different ways by different societies. The interface of these concepts is the focal point of this paper. The paper brings to fore how gender affects language use in the society and how power is demonstrated using language citing examples from African and Western context. The study reveals that, language is used to construct gender in that, we use language to demonstrate and convey what society anticipates from both sexes and power is demonstrated and achieved through language.

Objectification theory says that females are socialized to think of their bodies as objects and to internalize an observer’s viewpoint of their bodies (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). While feminist literature in developed countries is profuse with objectification of women within their national boundaries, they ignore the objectification committed against women of other countries, and especially the developing countries. Although, Nussbaum has extensively dealt with objectification, her analysis and much of the literature on objectification, document intra-national rather than international objectification, which I describe as cross-border objectification. In cross-border objectification, objectifier traverses one’s national boundaries to perpetrate objectification. I explain the cross-border objectification of women with the example of Thailand, a developing country, and how it is swayed by the developed world. The characteristics of cross-border objectification surpass the features of ‘objectification’ as they are defined in the west. Some of the specific characteristics observed as part of cross-border objectification are—providing alternate means and access to financial gains in order to exploit them; old men seeking unsustainable pleasure and company of young women; and finally, transitory emotional and non-sexual/sexual relationships, betraying social relationships of an enduring society. Further, it is exacerbated through the malicious circle of communication and transportation-beautification-objectification. The issue of cross-border objectification requires a special attention of the international community and largescale empirical researchers are necessary to investigate the nature of the problem and how remedial actions could be initiated.

From the past centuries, realism and its attendant understanding has been the subject of numerous academic and artistic discourses, observations, analysis, findings and recommendations. Today, the shape of realism and her scholarly projections therein is gradually becoming outdated and has subsequently transformed into contemporary artistic movements. The drive to be constantly engaged in academic postulations have kept academics restless, pontificating in different intellectual round-tables, which have led to adaptation, alteration, imitation, replication, and above all, freshness of ideas and scholarly improvements in all ramifications. This article reflects on the prism of re-tilting the dramatic realism as the only adequate mirror in concretely reflecting the society the way it is. This paper anchors its analysis on Obari Gomba’s Guerrilla Post with the character of Kafta on the centre of magnetism. This research relies on the Lifestyle theory which alleges that human beings are targeted as a result of their lifestyle choices. The aim of this consideration is to show how Guerrilla Post interrogates and reflects the modern day Nigerian society with the pockets of agitations, insurgencies, insurrections, hate speech propaganda, political inconsideration, rape, and police brutality thereof. The paper recommends that equitable distribution of wealth, political appointments and justice for those killed by the state apparatus and insensitive administration is the only panacea for national stability and economic productivity.

Previous studies on prostitution and sex slavery in African literature have focused chiefly on the thematic concerns of the novels such as the moral dimensions of the act but none of the studies has explored the role of language as a form of representation that enables the reader to infer the psychological conditions and attitudes of discourse participants either as victims of prostitution and sex slavery or as active agents in the sustenance of the act. Working within the systemic linguistic orientation and insights from the notion of phenomenalistic construal, therefore, this study explores the linguistic representation of the inner feelings and attitudes of victims of sex slavery and prostitution in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked, and Ifeanyi Ajaegbo’s Sarah House. The texts under study represent sex slavery and prostitution as forms of physical and mental violence against the victims of the acts and a gross violation of their humanness.

Gender differences are social ideals that develop within the matrix of compulsory heterosexuality. Gender differences in Indian society are deeply rooted. The movement and action for women’s equity and justice are also miss-rooted. It pushes women into to more danger. Therefore, achievement of women’s equity and justice in Indian society is far away. This paper focuses this argument and shows that matrix of gender education and gender practices should be changed and it should not be free from sexual lens. Otherwise, gender equity is far away or never be achieved to make gender balance in our society.