The Impact Of Women On Tree Planting Activities Throughout Rural Communities Of Nigeria

Women have always been partly equal to men in pre colonial Nigeria, having equal but separate roles politically and shared authority in the home. Colonialism changed this form of life of the Igbo culture by imposing Christianity and the idea of the man being the head of the village and the women inferior. Women were also stripped of their rights to have or not have children and forced to be in abusive arranged marriages. Colonialism then ended because the natives felt that self-determination had to replace colonialism and the colonizing nations were bankrupt from World War I resulting in small investment to the colonies. Decolonization was not an effortless trouble, but rather arduous and extensive, especially to women’s rights. Women’s roles in the Igbo culture changed drastically from equal, to less than men and to struggling to get by in each stage of colonialism within the work force, family and rights.

Since the beginning of time gender inequality has been an obstacle towards the human development of countries around the world. The Human Development Index was created to showcase the average achievement of males and females. However, females have been oppressed of their opportunities throughout time, which contradicts the main idea of the Human Development Index. To understand the difference between developed and developing countries and the reason for the gender gap between males and females there need to be an understanding of the indicators that are addressed through the key dimensions of Gender Inequality which include reproductive health, education and political representation. Through the use of the indicators, gender inequality demonstrates that there are variations within developed nations such as Norway and a developing nation such as Cameroon. Although gender inequality is present in both countries, the Human Development Index indicates that the developed country Norway is more advanced in regards of gender inequality then the developing country Cameroon. The development of a country does not completely reflect the position of gender inequality; but it is evident through the indicators of life expectancy, birth rate, education and economic status that a more developed country is more advanced in reducing gender equality.

Women and poverty is one of the critical areas of concern from the Beijing Platform for Action. Unfortunately there is over 1 billion of who are women that are living in poverty. Most of the women who are living in poverty and in very poor condition are from developing countries, but we also have this problem here in the United States. Poverty has been a factor of little to no education, single mother raising their families, little resources, and pay gap. In the article of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women, one of the strategic objectives is, to analyze from a gender perspective, policies and programmers including those related to macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt problems,

The Aboriginal women are very familiar with the forest and knows the ins and outs of it because of their constant moving around within the forest, which they have learned quite a bit from. For gathering, the Aboriginal women do not only focus on food but also on herbs and other such plants and natural resources that can be used medicinally. In the forests, they can find yams and other vegetation; however, they are always sure never to harm nature too much, as they believe nature will attack back if too much is taken from

As we deforest the African rainforest not only are we killing potential cures for diseases as well as innocent animals we are also killing human beings. There are three larger and more widely known tribes The Pygmies, The Huli, and The Indigenous (People of the rainforest). Most of the people in the African rainforest spend a plentiful amount of the year in a near village where they trade bush meat and honey for manioc, produce, and other goods. They most often trade with the family they had previously chosen often times the families will trade with each other for generations (Butler, 2012). Traditionally the people of the rainforest are hunters and gatherers, but deforestation has created jobs for forestry workers, farming, and mining (Social Impacts of Logging, 2006).Traditionally the rainforest inhabitants travel by foot or by boat with deforestation roads are being built allowing cars and trucks to go through. (Laurance, 2012). The people who occupy the rainforest live

Like many other tradition societies, Igbo held men higher than woman on the social ladder. Men can take titles while women can not. Women even have no say in the village council nor they can grow king crop Yam.

As the key holders of life women are seen to be powerful in that sense, which allows them to be important figures in the Igbo religion. Unlike many western religions the Igbo allow women to serve as priestess. The idea of women is also highly revered in the sense that The Igbo believe in and “earth goddess” that is seen to be a female. The earth goddess plays and important role due to that fact that the whole Igbo society is based on crop. This all ties into the idea that women are providers and are strongly needed for the society to function and

It could even be considered our responsibility as humans to protect these people. To see that they are kept safe from disease or deforestation that could jeopardize

The Igbos form Nigeria’s second largest ethnic group, and therefore they have a major place in Nigeria’s society. The traditional Igbo society is well organized, and both genders have their shares in the functioning of the society. However, the traditional Igbo women play a very active role in the construction and maintaining of the family, in the religious life, as well as in the economic growth. Women therefore make up an essential part of the Igbo society.

The Igbo people of southern Nigeria are a people of deep roots and rich culture. I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a visit to the village of Iheaka in the Enugu State of Nigeria. It was a bustling village covered in copper red sand. Women in long colorful floral dresses and skirts with children in shorts and colorful plain t-shirts with their rucksacks, men and women on motorcycles speeding down the dirt road leaving a trail of copper red dust. As beautiful as the experience was, I was only interested in weighing in more controversial topics that is gender roles in Igbo society. Usually taboo topics such as these are ignored or overlooked because gender roles have been

Conceability to access to power is very limited and stiffed, but they still try to choose paths or achieve their goals within masculine society (Laura, 2009). On the other hand, agriculturalists women in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer from unequally in the distribution of lands and resources although they should contribute in the household expenses while they get less than men do, and they work the same as men do. For the classical system their issues is more about society role, but in Sub-Saharan Africa, women could have economic challenges out of that inequality. “According to sex role theory, we acquire our gender identity through socialization, and afterward, we are socialized to behave in masculine or feminine ways. It is thus the task of

Gender roles in the Igbo community In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, gender roles are distinctly different; there is masculine and feminine tasks in the Igbo culture that everyone grew up to understand. Woman were bred to be caretakers, while men were bred to be the head of the house and lead everyone in it. During this time in Nigerian culture men were valued more than women. Men were looked at as a sign of strength and honor, in contrast, women were not as powerful or influential in the Nigerian community.

It has been shown that most societies that depend on foragers and hunting rely on close family ties for survival. Kinship is important because of the lack of resources (Nowak, 2010). Mbuti is a tribe of foragers and hunters, living on the resources they extract from forest. The Mbuti live in an area with an abundance of resources and close ties are not needed. Mbuti is the aboriginal name of the tribe; however the tribe is divided into sub-group (Mbuti and Efe). The name of the tribe depends on the dialect spoken. The Mbuti predominately speak the language of the Bantu and the Efe dialect is of the Sudanic language. The two clans of pygmies share a tropical rainforest stretching into the northeast sector of the Congo. The “Forest” is the core of the Mbuti culture (Mosko, p. 898, para. 6, 1987 a).

This article addresses four main points. First, at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the significance of women’s contribution was emphasized by the World Bank. However, according to the authors, the perception of women as goods was strengthened by the World Bank because of its emphasis on economic outcomes and its consequent failure to pay attention to the meaning of women’s empowerment and gender equality. Second, the World Bank, UN agencies and other institutions were observed to value only young women and girls, thus completely ignoring men’s role . Third, despite the existence of programs encouraging women empowerment such as microfinance and conditional cash transfers, women are forced to work for their livelihood coupled with the burden of housework. The authors also cast doubt on the notion that investing in young women and girls leads to the promotion of women’s empowerment and gender equality, or actually improves the economy as they are often unconsciously regarded as cheaper labor . Therefore, they underscored that while smart economics might

Baserup (1970) suggested that women needed to reduce the work loads they had so that they take part in education, projects which will also extend their power in the economy. In addition, Baserup pointed out that women have to receive credit facilities for greater economic projects. For example, Baserup echoed the mechanization of “female farming’ in African women farmers and revolutionarize traditional forms of agriculture for productive efficiency extracted from Schech and Haggis (2000). Rogers (1980) also suggested for a complete overhand of male attitudes against women. Rogers explicitly challenged this in her survey of the FAO institutional arrangement. She concluded that no women were found in field officers in technical division. Rogers (1980) therefore, concluded that women were not only excluded from planning and decision making but were being ignored and overlooked. Furthermore, households were assumed to be male headed which also generalized women as housewives (Rogers 1980:66 in Schech and Haggis, 2000). This shows that women’s work was regarded as non- work due to male bias. However, the WID approach agitated for equity, empowerment, efficiency and equal participation of women in existing structures.