Is there Gender Justice within Political Parties? A Case for Participatory Politics and Revolutionary Compromises

Abstract

This discourse exposes the queer conditioning of women as routine followers within political spaces: a politically inherited pre-colonial compromise that has suppressed women’s legal rights in political parties. The paper embraced a doctrinal methodology within a social and historical cross-based analysis of the development of women in politics and the legal rights of women to participatory justice in political parties in Nigeria. The incorporation of gender-based perspectives in politics and policy making process is imperative for development, and this paper highlights the evident need for political parties to structure gender participation in power sharing and representation and the imperceptible ruin which political gender imbalance thrusts on the Nigerian society. The essence of political participation in any society, either civilized or primitive, is to seek control of power, and the goal of feminist theory is to explain why women are subordinated. In other words, to fully understand the experience of discriminated women, one must consider the total dimensions of their reality. The National Gender Policy 2021-2026identified structural factors inhibiting the participation of women in politics and unless these factors are addressed, any effort geared towards improving the participation of women in governance and power, will simply be futile twirling. The paper concluded that women’s wings of political parties must have clearer and achievable leadership goals and aspirations and the political party remains responsible to providing capacity building for women’s rights as well as proactively securing more women in power.

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