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2025 - Volume 9 - Number 2

Reviewing the Ideological Foundations of Gender Inequality in sub-Saharan Africa

Adetayo Oludare Alade * ORCID: 0000-0002-7198-2975
Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Philosophy, Ile-Ife, NIGERIA

Omobola Olufunto Badejo * ORCID: 0000-0002-2537-3650
Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Philosophy, Ile-Ife, NIGERIA

Open Journal for Studies in Philosophy, 2025, 9(2), 65-76 * https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsp.0902.02065a
Received: 6 August 2025 ▪ Revised: 24 September 2025 ▪ Accepted: 10 November 2025

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
The attainment of gender equality by the year 2030 is one of the primary targets of the sustainable development goals. Efforts to achieve these goals have yielded some positive results is some sectors like educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, where more women have been absorbed. However, in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, key sectors like political participation have shown very little progress. Curious enough, a good number of countries in this region have put in place some affirmative action plan designed to encourage larger women participation in political administration. In many of these countries, such affirmative action plans have been largely ineffective, with men absolutely dominating the political administration landscape. This paper argues that this failure is owing to certain cultural practices that were dormant within indigenous societies, but amplified with the advent of colonialism. The paper further argues that, even though these practices have a foundation in indigenous societies, they are inconsistent with the metaphysical and ideological belief systems of these indigenous societies. Thus, the paper concludes that, in order to attain gender parity in political participation in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a need to evaluate and re-emphasize indigenous metaphysical and ideological worldviews to properly ground the action plans towards the attainment of equal participation in political administration.

KEY WORDS: Gender equality, sub-Saharan Africa, African cosmology, African communalism.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Adetayo Oludare Alade, Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Philosophy, Ile-Ife, NIGERIA.

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