THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN ENHANCING WOMEN’S LEGAL STATUS AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN NIGERIA

Résumé

t I believe that many women and I want to do what we can to make this world better. I also believe that we need to examine even the very best of our intentions. In us, I think there is a desire maybe even a need to somehow, make everything be alright for women. I wonder if this need is behind the resistance we sometimes have to the anger of women. The anger is a visible sign of pain that won’t go away. This is because their legal status and rights are taken away from their male counterparts who discriminate or marginalize them because according to them, women are the weaker sex. Gender is described as one’s private sense of being a man or woman, all societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a social identity in relation to the other members in the society. In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females. Equality is one of the cornerstones of every society which aspires to the attainment of social justice and human rights. In virtually all societies and spheres of activity, women are subject to inequality in law. They also suffer one form of discrimination or the other at various levels of the society. This study ‘The role of language in enhancing women’s legal status and human rights in Nigeria’ focuses on the role language plays in enhancing women’s legal status, the state of the African women, the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, and human rights. The theoretical framework adopted for this study is social power theory, propounded by Max Weber (1922). The study uses a qualitative research design. The findings show that language enhances women’s legal status and human rights in Nigeria. The researcher recommends that women should be accorded their legal status and human rights