Women in development, food security and Islamic religion: Exploration of gender oppression in eastern Nigeria

Abstract

In Africa, women are considered as agent of development and custodian of culture and sources of organic food. Their roles in the  countryside are invaluable when one examines their inputs in food availability, affordability, accessibility and quality against their male  counterpart. Also worth noting is the mobility of males to urban areas where they look for unavailable paid jobs. This paper examines the  roles of women in food security and how they lack basic resources to actualise their developmental roles in their communities due to  cultural and religious reasons. Access to land and collateral to secure financial help from banks is almost unavailable. To this, they  continue to practice farming at the subsistence level. We intend to examine what The Holy Quran says regarding women's rights in a changing world. In trying to examine this, the paper adopts green theory with some flavours of the feminist paradigm and secondary  sources of data. A conclusion is drawn that Islamic religion empowers women more than what African culture dictates.