INVISIBLE DISCRIMINATION: GENDER BIAS IN DOMESTIC DECISION-MAKING IN NIGERIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18623/rvd.v23.8521Keywords:
Gender Bias, Nigerian Family, Feminist Ethics, Capabilities Approach, Human Dignity, Domestic Decision-Making, Patriarchy, Human RightsAbstract
This paper examines invisible gender bias in domestic decision-making within Nigerian families, situating the analysis within an interdisciplinary moral framework that combines feminist ethics and the capabilities approach. Feminist ethics critiques patriarchal morality by exposing how cultural valorisation of women’s obedience and self-sacrifice conceals moral exclusion, emphasizing relationality, care, and moral voice as central to justice. The capabilities approach highlights the structural dimensions of autonomy, showing that restrictions on women’s decision-making deprive them of substantive freedoms essential to human dignity and flourishing. Together, these frameworks reveal that gender inequality in the private sphere is both a moral and human rights issue, implicating cultural norms, religious interpretations, and socio-economic practices. The Nigerian family, while celebrated as a site of love and moral formation, simultaneously perpetuates asymmetrical power relations that inhibit women’s moral agency and capability to act as autonomous beings. The paper argues for a philosophy of moral partnership in which authority, care, and decision-making are shared equitably, reconciling cultural identity with ethical and human rights imperatives. Implications extend to human rights theory, education, legal reform, and cultural interpretation, suggesting that achieving substantive gender equality requires both moral transformation and structural change. By engaging the Nigerian experience, this study contributes to a broader understanding of how private domains intersect with universal human rights, demonstrating that justice, dignity, and autonomy must be realized within intimate spaces as much as in public life.
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