Negotiating Women’s spaces and power relations in the home: A feminist analysis of Okoh’s The good wife

Abstract

Gender inequality in the domestic environment continues to rare its head despite global advancement and awareness in gender and development issues.  Women have traditionally been marginalised from the structures in this environment where masculinity is linked to leadership/headship within  the African tradition. In this realm, there is an obvious display of injustice in the gender hierarchy. This paper will discuss the struggles and challenges  women face in breaking through traditional stereotypes of gender division of space in the home environment using the Nollywood film, The Good Wife,  directed by Okey Zubelu Okoh and produced by Chinney Love Eze, who is also the Screenplay writer. The movie which was released in 2015 features a  combined array of both new and relatively old generation of movie actors and actresses like Frederick Leonard, Yvonne Jegede, Oma Nnadi, Daniel Lloyd  and Ayo Adesanya. Feminist film theories which have vast potentials to reinvigorate and energise the discourse will be employed to critically analyse  spaces ascribed to women in the film. These theories which will be used to deconstruct the epistemological foundations of patriarchy will also seek for  strategies for transforming gender disparity and gendered behaviours in these spaces. This attempt will move the discourse on gender relations in the  home beyond mere rhetoric to tackling the gendered configuration therein.