Gender-based Violence in Nigerian Home Movies

One of the primary concerns of the Millennium Development Goals is to “promote gender equality and empower women”. The paper examines how violence against women is portrayed in selected Nigerian home movies. Women and girls in Nigeria are still subjected to various culturally based forms of abuse, exploitation and discrimination, especially wife battering, rape and other forms of sexual violence, female genital mutilation, trafficking in women, and inhuman widowhood practices. The paper discusses how Nigerian dramatists present or misrepresent gender related violence in their works. It relates the discussion to the local social and cultural contexts in which these films are set, and to the wider global debates about gender justice and human rights. The paper focuses on a representative selection of video films which portray the Nigerian woman burdened in various ways with patriarchal prejudices and very obnoxious native laws and customs that violate her human rights and dignity. It concludes with some comments on the adverse social consequences of violence against women, and the relevant international conventions, local legislation and other social responses that seek to redress these gender related anomalies in Nigeria. It also considers how home videos can be used more creatively to combat gender-based violence.