GENDER, CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLLECTIVE ACTION PARTICIPATION

The concept of gender is a systematic way of understanding men and women socially and the associating relationships between them. To understand the philosophy of gender is to have an understanding of the sociology of gender- the classification of male and female. Women's social role is dependent on their religion, culture and geographical environment. Nigerian society is a patriarchal society where men are the dominant members in the society. Patriarchy leads to gender inequality and subordination of women. The family structure has the man/husband as the head of the family and the wife/wives and the children succumb to his authority. There are cultural limitations that have hindered Nigeria women from maximizing their potentials, culturally, economically, socially and politically. The aim of this paper is to identify the prevailing cultural limitations hindering Nigerian women from contributing to the Nigerian society and to determine the impact these continues to have on them. Thus, the objective is set at evaluating the influence of culture on the role and contributions of women to society through collective action, using play text to analyze this phenomenon. For the purpose of clarifications, this research chooses to use 'women' as a comprehensive term to address the limiting conditions all women experience. The theory of gender performativity is used in this discourse and the generic term 'woman' is focused on due to the fact that its meaning conceptualizes- all biological females and not transgender females.