COSMOPOLITAN FEMINISM, WOMANISM, AND FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN RECENT NIGERIAN DRAMA BY WOMEN

Abstract

Feminism as a movement agitates for gender equality, equity and fairness within the socio-political dynamics of a nation. At its initial stage, it was basically a white middle-class women association agitating for rights that mostly addressed their aspirations in Europe and America. This fuelled a new and alternative feminist theory by black women in the Diaspora that addressed their own problems under the coinage of Womanism. But this theory was also not all-encompassing and universal in dealing with the agitations of African women because of its obvious inadequacy in highlighting their problems. This resulted in black women from Africa distancing themselves from it, maintaining that it was against their own yearnings. Consequently, other alternative feminisms that are Afrocentric in nature sprang up. In this study we shall briefly summarise some of these theories. They include Motherism by Catherine Acholonu, Nego-feminism by Nnaemeka Obioma and STIWANISM by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie as background to the explication of the situation of the African woman within the ambit of her cultural milieu using selected plays written by Nigerian women.