CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
It is a truism the adage that says; behind every successful man is a woman. Women have been regarded as fragile and should be subordinate to the man but they can play very important role for the betterment of the society. This fragile nature has proved her taking domineering influence on many occasions in the history of mankind. Across the country, women have created innovative, comprehensive programs to meet the needs of their communities. Women have established themselves as leaders in the community development process and acquire the skills that have brought positive changes to their communities. As effective builders of social capital, Christian women leaders play key roles in establishing and maintaining important relationships and networks in their communities.
They are facing the challenges of racial, culture, economic and political barriers that exist in the community development process and in many cases overcoming those barriers become their motivation. While their comprehensive approach has influenced the evolution of the community development field, Christian women’s contributions have been neither widely acknowledged nor explicitly credited. The result of the Christian women groups in community development study provide deeper insights into women’s thinking about community development, the barriers they perceive to women’s leadership and the kind of efforts that should be made to facilitate and promote their status and roles in the field. Christian women groups demonstrate variety of effective ways women create social capital that is central to the existence of healthy communities. In fact, the contributions of Christian women groups in community development projects can bring about significant positive changes. Thus, Christian’s women groups have been proved to be one of the effective entry point for initiating activities or development projects in the community that are beneficiary to all the members of the community (Chiwendu, 1980). Therefore, for effective development to occur, their contributions need not be disputed.
1.2 Statement to the Problem
The cultural beliefs that the education of a woman ends in the kitchen, makes it almost impossible for males to see the immense contributions of women groups to the community development. For example, through picture books, girls are taught to have low aspirations because there are so few opportunities portrayed as available to them. It is believed that men’s work is outside the home and women’s work is inside the home. For example we see women at home washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, yell at the children, takes care of babies, and does the shopping, while men are store keepers, house builders, storytellers, monks, preachers, fishermen, policemen, fighters, soldiers, adventurers, judges, farmers and pilots. They were also the king and the gods.
Within the traditional African society, women from almost all the ethnic group were excluded from performing certain activities, especially those that concern leadership and other hand and significant activities like construction works and clergy roles, these were considered as men’s domain. The exclusion of women from some of these activities are due to the socio-cultural factors constraining them from participating in activities that were considered to be exclusively for men (William, 1973).
Furthermore gender inequality contributes to the low contribution of women to community development. Many a times, we hear the men ask, “Don’t you know you are a woman? This question is due to the systematic
gender bias in customs, beliefs and attitudes that confine women mostly to the domestic sphere and not in certain matters expected to be in the men’s domain. Also, the economic and domestic workloads deprived women of time to contribute to community development.
Finally laws and customs also impede women’s access to credit, productive inputs, employment, education, information and politics. These factors affect women’s ability and incentives to contribute in economic and social development activities in the community. The purpose of this research is to find out the contributions of Christian women’s groups to community development, since it is believed that “what a man can do, a woman can do better”. The challenges facing them in their bid to contribute will also be reviewed.