1

Abstract

Asikia Ige, Department of Jurisprudence & International Law, Faculty of Law University of

Lagos, Akoka Lagos Nigeria rige@unilag.edu.ng/asikiaige@gmail.com

9. Future Developments in research into the role of human rights law in relation to women

and poverty

Title: Women, Poverty and Human Rights Law: Applying Feminist Research Methods

Feminisation of Poverty has received considerable attention of scholars in the field of humanities

and very recently law in the 21st century. This attention has led to efforts and struggles led by

women and supported by men towards achieving gender equality. The consensus among scholars

is that poverty is a multi-dimensional socio-economic and cultural tradition that transcends

economic descriptions, law and analyses. Hence, attempts in finding solutions to the problem of

poverty especially that being faced by women, by defining it as ‘lack of access to basic

needs/goods’ alone will not suffice to remedy the situation; what is needed is a full

understanding of the status of women in a typical African country.

Poverty is a sex equality issue because women’s poverty is a manifestation of persistent

discrimination against women. Poverty cannot be adequately explained without human

development. Human development is the improvement of quality of life; it involves the

eradication of conditions which make a human being unable to attain a decent standard of living.

Human rights law now refers to the relationship between the individual and the state or its

government; the right to political participation, the freedoms that the individual should enjoy and

their claims on the state with regard to the provision of basic needs of life.

There have been statistical reports on poverty carried out by the World Bank, United Nations

Development Programme (UNDP Report); British Department for International Development

and certain United States Agencies. These various reports which shows grim statistics follow the

quantitative methods which tend to use the more structured methods of data collection such as

surveys and experimental designs. Feminists have however, criticised these methods because it is

male oriented and merely translates women’s experiences into predetermined categories,

resulting in distorted finding s or even in silencing on women’s voices.

The paper therefore will consider applying feminist research methods in future developments in

research into the role of human rights law in relation to women and poverty; this is necessary

because feminist methods require ‘situated judgement’ rather than an overarching theory to work

out the most appropriate technique at any time; and secondly, a constant feature of feminist

research method is that qualitative methods of enquiry are usually favoured; above all feminist

methods are concerned more with the approach taken and the ideological aims of the researcher

(s).

2

1.0 Introduction

In the past 40years, the feminist revolution has expanded women’s opportunities and women

have made impressive gains and achievements. Women are active politically, economically, and

socially in ways that were unimaginable decades ago. Political and economic rights required by

women allow them to live their lives quite differently from their foremothers. Reproductive

rights allow women the freedom to choose when to have or not have a child.1

With these tremendous gains achieved by women, yet women form the larger part of the poverty

army and women’s human rights do not mean much in many parts of the world especially in

Asia and Africa. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s hundreds of millions of illiterates are women.

In Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where populations are rising fast and many girls do not

go to school, the numbers of illiterate women are still growing in the twenty-first century.2

Mortality rates for girls are significantly higher than for boys in the enormously populous

countries of China and India, due to discrimination in providing nutrition and health care. In

large parts of the world, violence against women is still pervasive and under-reported. In some

studies, over half of all women report having been subjected to physical violence by an intimate

partner. Being free from domestic assault and from gender discrimination are just beginning to

be recognised as rights to which all women are entitled as women’s rights come to be seen as

human rights.3

Figures in 2002 showed that although women’s pay rates compared to men’s had improved very

slightly compared to a decade earlier, full time female workers still make 77.5% of what their

1Women’s Realities, Women’s Choices: An Introduction to Women’s Studies (New York: Oxford University Press

2005) p.2 2United Nations. The World’s Women 2000: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations 2000) p.87

3ibid p.56, p.153

3

male counterparts did.4 The accumulated earnings of women lag much further. For the years

1983-98, women earned only 38% of what men earned. To care for family members, women

more often give up their jobs or work part-time, and the tendency in self-reinforcing; because

women earn less, they are more apt than men to interrupt their careers.5

Issues concerning women are some of the most serious issues of our time. But it is only in the

last two decades or so that the world community started to take them seriously.6 Kofi Annan in

an address to mark the International Women’s Day stated that:

The Millennium Development Goals--- including the promotion of gender equality and the

empowerment of women---represent a new way of doing development business.

These eight commitments drawn from the Millennium Declaration, which was endorsed by all

Member states of the United Nations, form a specific, targeted and time bound blueprint for

building a better world in the twentieth-first century. They represent a set of simple but powerful

and measurable objectives that every woman and man in the street, from New York to Nairobi to

New Delhi, can easily support and understand.

In our work to reach these objectives, as the Millennium Declaration made clear, gender equality

is not only a goal in its own rights; it is critical to our ability to reach all the others. Study after

study has shown that there is no effective development strategy in which women do not play a

central role.

When women are fully involved the benefits can be seen immediately; families are healthier and

better fed; their income, savings and investment go up. And what is true of families is also true

of communities and, in the long run, of whole countries. That means that all our work for

development---from agriculture to health, from environment protection to water resource

management---must focus on the needs and priorities of women. It means promoting the

4D Leonhardt, ‘Gap between pay of men and women smallest on record’. New York Times, Feb 17, 2003 A1, 15

5J Madrick, The earning power of women has really increased, rights? Take a closer look. New York Times, June 10,

2004 economic scene 6C Agomo, ‘The Working Woman in a Changing World of Work’ An Inaugural Lecture delivered at the University

of Lagos Nigeria on December 15, 2004 p.1

4

education of girls, who form the majority of the children who are not in school. It means

bringing literacy to the half billion adult women who cannot read or write---and who make up

two thirds of the world adult illiterates.

And it means placing women at the centres of our fight against HIV/AIDS. Women now account

for 50percent of those infected worldwide. In Africa, that figure is now 58percent. We must

make sure that women and girls have all the skills, services and self-confidence they need to

protect themselves. We must encourage men to replace risk-taking with taking responsibility.

Across all levels of society, we need to see a deep social revolution that transforms relationships

between women and men, so that women will be able to take greater control of their lives---

financially and physically.

There is no time to lose if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals by the target date

of 2015. Only by investing in the world’s women can we expect to get there. When women

thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given better start in life.7

Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations aptly captured the essence of

women being co-partners in the society in the twenty-first century. I must however, add that the

Millennium Development Goals end in 2015 which is very near and the situation of women have

not improved in a very significant manner; besides Kofi Annan, in the same vein, Mary

Robinson, first woman President of Ireland in her remark on 18 October 2002 said:

Anniversaries allow us to consider where we have been and where we are going. This

anniversary gives---the chance to reflect on the significant progress made in educating women

and preparing them for careers in law and other fields. Equally important, it offers an opportunity

to reflect where challenges remain and how they can be addressed.8

7Reprinted in Women’s History Month 2003 by Whitney M. Young Jr. Information Resource Center, Department of

Public Affairs U.S Embassy, 2 Broad Street, Lagos 8M Robinson, ‘Human Rights and the Empowerment of Women’ Former United Nations Commissioner for Human

Rights, Remarks made at the 75th

Anniversary of the Admission of Women to Columbia Law School. Reprinted in

Women’s History Month ibid

5

Women as opportunity dictates often examine the gains made over time, yet it is not lost on them

that they are yet to attain the equality status that has been envisaged by advocates of women’s

human rights; this is because there is actually no society where women are treated equally as

men.

Poverty is primarily a concept of economics.9 It is the state of the inability of a person,

household, community or state to satisfy basic needs. In relation to an individual, it is the state of

having insufficient means of meeting the basic needs of life.10

However, there are several

conceptions of poverty based on the notion of the basic needs of a particular individual. The idea

that basic needs are merely those needed for survival is obviously unrealistic. Survival may be

considered as only one of aims of human beings.11

Humanity yearning for respect, tolerance and equality goes a long way back in history, but the

curious thing to note is that, although our societies have in many respects made great strides in

the technological, political, social and economic fields, contemporary grievances remain very

much the same they were hundreds and even thousands of years ago. The very specificity of the

concept of ‘human rights’ is that they belong to the individual in his or her quality as a human

being who cannot be deprived of their substance in any circumstances; these rights are intrinsic

to the human condition.12

9D Akeredolu-Ale, ‘Poverty Reduction in Nigeria’s Emerging Democracy: Challenges, Opportunities and the Way

Forward (Keynote address) Samuel K and Akinola C (eds) The ‘Face of Poverty’ Proceedings and Policy

Recommendations of the 9th

ObafemiAwolowo Foundation Dialogue (Lagos: Obafemi Awolowo Foundation 2001)

p.11 10

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th

(ed) Vol.14 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, 1980) p.935 11

A Obilade, ‘Poverty and the Legal System: The Law’s Response to Poverty in Nigeria’ Poverty, Guobadia D and

Azinge E (eds) Poverty, the Nigerian Economy and the Law (Lagos: Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

2004) p.206 12

Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers

p.2, 4

6

This paper limits itself to application of feminist research methods in analysing women, poverty

and human rights and more importantly employing feminist research methods to arrive at

providing solution (s) to women’s poverty through the application of human rights law. I begin

the paper by stating my working definition (s). In part 2 of the paper, I examine the nexus

between women, poverty and human rights; part 3 dwell on the overview of research methods

generally; in part 4, I examine feminist research methods; part 5 states what application of

feminist research methods entails; in part 6, the paper argue for the need to apply feminist

research methods to women, poverty and human rights law and a succinct conclusion follows.

1.1 Definition of Terms

Women: women have traditionally been thought of primarily as those who are ‘not men’; they

have been constructed as the ‘other’. Their characteristics have been devalued because they have

been viewed as defective or incomplete males, inherently less than ‘ideal’ and even less human.13

The Cambridge International Dictionary of English defines ‘women’ as: an adult female human

being’ and goes further to state that women folk refers to ‘women in a family or society’.14

Poverty: The Oxford paper back defines it as being poor and having a great lack of money and

resources. It further states that poverty means scarcity, inferiority and poorness.15

Roget’s thesaurus give other meaning of the words to include, but not limited to--- financial

embarrassment, difficulties, impoverishment, beggary, penury, penniless, pauperism, destitution,

deprivation, indigence, neediness, necessity, dire need, want etc.16

13

Women’s Realities, Women’s Choices, op cit p.15 14

The Cambridge International Dictionary of English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996) pp.1675-1676 15

Oxford English Dictionary Paper Back Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012) p.471 16

Roget’s Thesaurus International Dictionary 1922 p.804

7

According to Edozien,

‘Poverty is not being able to have what most have (not being able to live the way normal people

live) due to inadequate basic resources to acquire them. That is a condition in which people do

not have the resources to satisfy their basic needs to make life meaningful. Defined within this

context, one must first and foremost determine those basic needs before proceeding to ask

whether they are in short supply or not. In this perspective, the term (poverty) refers to some

materialistic components of people’s standard of living’.17

Thus, poverty is primarily a state of lack of goods and resources in which an individual (in this

wise women) is unable to meet his/her needs.

Human rights are commonly understood as being those rights which are inherent to the human

being. Human rights are legally guaranteed by human rights law, which consist of the treaties as

well as declarations, human rights principles that have been agreed under the auspices of the

United Nations 1945.18

The human rights framework provides a basis for both legal measures to promote institutional

change and interventions to create consensus around the values and norms they represent.19

Human rights are regarded as those fundamental and inalienable rights essential for life as a

human being. Human rights were born out of the need to protect the individual from an abuse of

state authority.20

17

E Edozien, ‘Poverty: Some Issues in Concepts and Theory’ paper presented at the National Economic Society

Annual Conference 1975 18

E Azinge, ‘Poverty and Human Rights’ Poverty, the Nigerian Economy and the Law Guobadia D and Azinge E

(eds) op cit p.187 19

Ibid 20

R Wallace and O Martin-Ortega, International Law Seventh Edition (London: Sweet and Maxwell 2013) p.240

8

The sum total of the definitions of the key words can be summed up as: women (adult female)

being poor and lacking in resources to meet her essential needs in the society is in search of

fundamental and inalienable rights essential for her well-being.

2.0 The Nexus between Women, Poverty and Human Rights Law

According to the Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in

Beijing September 1995, ‘More than one billion people in the world today, the great majority of

whom are women, live in an unacceptable conditions of poverty, mostly in the developing

countries’.21

As Buvinic argued that: ‘women now account for a growing percentage of the

worlds poor’.22

The United Nations Development Programme also confirms that 70% of the

world’s poor are women.23

Is poverty taking on a female face? I will answer in the affirmative; this is because whereas

poverty is recognised as a global problem, in Africa alone, over 200 million people are

wallowing in poverty with an average of 45-50 percent in sub-Sahara Africa live below poverty

line, a proportion much higher than any other region of the world except South Asia. A

dimension to this trend is in the increasing impoverisation of the women population vis-à-vis the

men.24

Women are not one group of people with common backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

As Charlesworth and Chinkin argued:

21

United Nations, The Beijing Platform for Action (New York: United Nations 1996) p.37 22

M Buvinic, ‘The picture of poverty contains mostly female faces’ Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1997 p.10 23

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report (New York: Oxford University Press

1995) p.4 24

F Eboiyeni, A Bankole, A Eromosele, ‘Work, Women Employment and Feminisation of Poverty in Nigeria’

Gender and Behaviour, Vol.4 No.1 June 2006 p.643

9

‘The categories of ‘women’ and ‘female’ are contentious when used to make general points,

especially in international context. The use of undifferentiated classification such as ‘women’

imposes the appearance of homogeneity that conceals differences in the lives of women. these

include race, ethnicity, indigeneity, religion, class or caste, wealth, familial status, geographical

location, education, sexuality and age. In many situations it will be fruitless, as well as inaccurate

to assume that the lives of, for example a young Afghan woman refugee, a middle class

Canadian housewife and an older Zimbabwean woman agricultural worker are subject to similar

pressures and influences’.25

Yet women are bound together by certain indices which bind them together as Ibru stated: All

women experience certain discrimination just because they are women.26

Poverty is a catastrophic disease. It demobilises and dehumanises its victims. Poverty is a

condition and experience in which the poor are subjected to social, economic, political, cultural

and spiritual disabilities, disorientations and maladjustments.27

Poverty manifests in different

ways. As the Copenhagen Declaration has stated:

Poverty has various manifestation, including lack of income and productive resources sufficient

to ensure sustainable livelihoods: hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to

education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness

and inadequate housing; unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also

characterised by a lack of participation in decision making and in civil, social and cultural life.28

25

H Charlesworth and C Chinkin, The boundaries of International law: A feminist analysis (Manchester:

Manchester University Press 2000) p.4 26

A Ibru, ‘Women’s Human Rights are Human Rights’ Text delivered at the Annual Guardian Lecture on July 4,

1993 27

E Alemika, ‘Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Dislocation in Nigeria’ Poverty, The Nigerian Economy and the

Law op cit pp.110-111 28

Poverty Eradication released by the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development at the World Summit for

Social Development in Copenhagen, Denmark 1995

10

The statement thus identify both the manifestations and consequences of poverty and domains or

sectors which poverty reduction must target.29

According to Bunch, The concept of human rights is one of the few moral visions ascribed to

internationally. Although its scope is not universally agreed upon, it strikes deep chords of

response among many. Promotion of human rights is a widely accepted goal and thus provides a

useful framework in seeking redress of gender abuse. Further, it is one of the few concepts that

speaks to the need for transnational activism and concern about the lives of people globally. The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 symbolises the world vision and defines

human rights broadly. While not much is said about women, Article 2 entitles all to ‘the rights

and freedoms set forth in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour,

sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or

other status’.30

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Latin American women who fought for the inclusion of sex in the

Declaration before its passage clearly intended that it would address the problem of women.31

Today, the language of universal human rights is accepted, if not always in substance, as the

norm to that should govern global cooperation. The proliferation of United Nations treaties,

conventions and declarations dedicated to human rights reflect this new world order of rights.

Poverty cannot be adequately explained without recourse to human rights, for human rights is an

inalienable right by virtue of which every human person is entitled to enjoy; accordingly a

person (woman) who lacks sufficient resources to enable her to enjoy economic or social

development is poor. Any woman who does not have resources necessary for her to attain decent

living is poor; because women constitute half of the global population, the full and complete

development of the different countries necessitate that poverty among women must be eradicated

29

E Alemika op cit at p.112 30

C Bunch, ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights’ 12 Hum. Rts. Q. 486 1990 31

Ibid

11

if the welfare of the world and the peace required for the maximum participation of women on

equal terms with men in all fields. Here lies the link between women, poverty and human rights

law.

3.0 An Overview of Research Methods

The quest for knowledge leads to enquiry. The desire to find answers to ‘why’ and ‘why not’ in

our lives leads to a systematic search for information. Research is a continuum, not a static

phenomenon, nor do techniques constitute a close category.32

The Cambridge edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica defines research as:

The act of searching into a matter closely and carefully, inquiry directed to the discovery of truth

and in particular the trained scientific investigation of principles and facts of any subject based

on original and first hand study of authorities or experiment. Investigations of every kind which

have been based on original sources of knowledge may be styled research and it may be said that

without ‘research’ no authoritative works have been written, no scientific discoveries or

inventions made, no theories of any value propounded.33

According to Agrawala, research is gathering of evidence or information for ascertaining an

assumption or verifying some hypothesis. It is an inquiry for the verification of a fresh theory or

for supplanting prevailing theories by new knowledge.34

No research is completely new, as even original researches build on existing knowledge either by

agreeing with previous research or refuting its claims.

The term ‘research’ has several components. One of the components is the discovery of truth.

The second component is ‘first hand study’. Research can be further divided into two namely:

32

M Gasiokwu, Legal Research and Methodology (Jos, Nigeria: FAB Educational Books 1993) Preface 33

Encyclopaedia Britannica (Cambridge: Cambridge Edition ) p.1911 34

R Agrawala, ‘Indian Legal Research: An evolutionary and perspective analysis’ (1982) 24 J.IL.I p.470

12

doctrinal research and empirical research. Doctrinal research entails organisation of propositions;

drawing upon resources which are easily available in the library and drawing up conclusions

from these materials. Empirical research entails the drawing up of instruments such as:

questionnaires, surveys and interviews to arrive at a proposition which can be verified.35

Doctrinal research has been criticised for its inability to clearly distinguish both its research

design and the benefits that accrues to its readers. While empirical research is often accused of a

predetermined outcome.

4.0 Feminist Research Methods: What it is

According to Mama,

Feminist studies have often been subversive, overturning pre-existing assumptions, pre-existing

histories of knowledge, transforming pre-existing accounts of history with rich and interesting

her stories that function to complete and to subvert the masculine dominated cannon that went

before.36

Feminist research methods are seen in plural terms, there are no methods which are peculiar to

feminist research. Campbell and Wasco noted that: more often than not, feminists methods are

familiar methods of data collection---that are adapted to be consistent with feminist ideology.37

Feminist theory is an extension of feminism theoretical and philosophical discourse. Its primary

aim is to understand the nature of gender and gender in-equality in the society. Feminist

research methods in some sense is a strand of socio-legal research methods, because it recognises

the traditional approaches and methods in interrogating knowledge and realities may not serve to

35

I Ayua, ‘Legal Research and Development’ Law and Research Methodology Ayua I and Guobadia D (eds)

(Lagos: Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies 2001) pp.5-6 36

A Mama, ‘Critical Connections: Feminist Studies in African Contexts’ Feminism in Development (eds) Cornwall

A, Harrison E, Whitehead A (London: Zed Books 2007) p.153 37

R Campbell and S Wasco, ‘Feminist Approaches to Social Science: Epistemological and Methodological Tenets’

American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol.28 (6) pp.773-791

13

elicit the significant problems of women in the society. Feminist research method is essentially

‘asking the woman question’ a phrase usually used in connection with the kind of social change

witnessed in the latter part of the nineteenth century in Europe and North America and which

questioned the fundamental roles and status of women in United Kingdom, the United States and

Russia. Issues of women suffrage, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, property rights, legal

rights, medical rights and marriage dominated cultural discussions in newspapers and intellectual

circles, with supporters on both sides of the debate.38

Today, the ‘woman question’ transcends the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia; as

women all over the world have begun to question the age old beliefs about the roles of women in

the society. I argue that the most potent tool to deal with the issue of women, poverty and human

rights law lies in the use of feminist methodological approach which will effectively depict the

male bias in research and also develop a tenet of feminist stand in working towards avoiding

assumptions that throw up the male gender as the norm in the society which is a subjective

reality of the whole reality of female experience.

According to Scales,

Feminist analysis begins with the principle that objective reality is a myth. It recognises that

patriarchal myths are projections of the male psyche.39

Feminism as a theory strand both political and legal dimensions of women’s lives in society.

According to Atsenuwa,

One of the basic principles underlying legal theory today is that it is sex/gender blind. It

addresses itself to human and not the man or woman. Thus, in legal theory, the approach is to

38

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_woman_question accessed 21 April 2014 39

A Scales, ‘The Emergence of Feminist Jurisprudence: An Essay’ 95 Yale Law Journal 1373

14

apply a non-sexist, non-gendered, neutral perspective to facts. Yet, women are discriminated

against daily on the basis of sex and/or gender as they experience law’s impact on their lives. If

this is so, it is imperative that a feminist project which aims at ‘real’ justice, freedom and

equality for women must not remain enslaved to traditional methodology.40

Feminist analysis effectively challenges existing notions of knowledge/or way of doing things by

being critical of assumed knowledge/method; it is a gender-sensitive approach which seeks to

correct the imbalance and unfairness that results in perspectives that excludes the circumstances

of gendered lives of women.

Much of feminist legal theorising encompasses challenging traditional legal methods of inquiry;

thus, in this paper, I have drawn on Katerine Bartlett’s summary of the fundamentals of feminist

legal methods.

4.1 Unmasking Patriarchy

Legal feminists began their critique of traditional law with a series of questions designed to

uncover male biases hidden beneath supposedly ‘neutral’ laws. This technique, called unmasking

patriarchy helps identify the gender based consequences of law. ‘asking the woman question’

entails examining how law fails to take into account the experiences and values that are more

typical of women than men; it demonstrates also how features of law may not be neutral in a

general sense, but also ‘male’ in a specific sense. To the extent is that however, is to dethrone

law as a tool of organising society; it engages also how the short comings of traditional law

might be corrected.

40

A Atsenuwa, Feminist Jurisprudence: An Introduction (Lagos: Florence &Lambard (Nig) Ltd 2001) p.130

15

4.2 Contextual Reasoning

Feminists pay attention to the personal and social history of the parties, relative perceptions

among the parties and overall context. Implicit in this approach is the belief that daily lives of

real people matter, or as the bumper sticker says ‘the personal is political’. Feminists have

longed invoked the realities of private life to spur legislative and social change. Women

suffragists argued that the right to vote would improve government by allowing women to bring

their personal insight and morality to public discourse.

4.3 Consciousness Raising

Consciousness raising describes the process by which individuals share personal experiences

with others in an effort to derive collective significance or meaning from those experiences.41

Feminist methodology have been queried for three main reasons. First, feminists have been

criticised for failing to produce adequately rational, scientific or unbiased knowledge (on the

understanding that their critics use methodologies that are adequate in these respects.) second,

challenges come from women’s varied experiences of cultural differences, social divisions and

power relations. For example, claims that patriarchal power, sexuality or reproductions are key

mechanisms in the oppression of women ignoring other factors such as racism, systems of

production, nationalism, hetero-sexism among others. Third, feminist knowledge claims are

tangled in tensions between knowledge of gender relations that take the existence of women for

granted, and theories that take apart the grounds of feminism claims to knowledge and treat

41

K Bartlett, ‘Feminist Legal Methods’ Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender. Bartlett K and

Kennedy R (eds) New Perspective on Law, Culture and Society (Connecticut: West View Press 1991) pp.377-383

16

‘women’ and ‘gender’ as products of ideas rather than of embodiment, patriarchy or social

construction.42

In response to the queries raised on feminist methodology, I argue that research is not neutral

free nor gender free as posited by critics of feminist methods hence feminist have always queried

the notion of neutrality and argue that there is always a measure of subjectivity in research.

Secondly, feminists are aware that there is no grand theory on women’s oppression and

subjugation but argue that despite the absence of a grand theory, women experience

discrimination and exclusion based on sex and coupled with the other factors of race, system of

production, nationalism and sexuality which tends to exacerbate the experiences of women in a

male dominated society. Feminists acknowledge the fact that the society is gendered and

knowledge is gendered hence in tackling women issues there must be constant recourse to the

fundamentals of the society in order to address the issue of women, poverty and human rights

law.43

5.0 Applying Feminist Research Methods: What it entails

Feminist methods are concerned more with the approach taken and the ideological aims of the

researcher (s) than any particular method. Nevertheless, a constant feature in feminist literature is

that qualitative methods of inquiry are usually favoured. Although, quantitative methods which

tend to use the more structured methods of data collection such as surveys and experimental

designs have been considered as the ‘scientific’ and ‘reliable’ researchers have criticised this

42

C Ramazaanoglu with J Holland, Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices (London: Sage Publications

2002) pp.3-4 43

R Ige, ‘Exploring the Contributions of African Feminism to the Development of International Human Rights’ an

Unpublished PhD Thesis 2013

17

method because of the goal which is not necessarily to quantify facts, prove a thesis or test a

hypothesis.44

Feminist researchers have jettisoned quantitative methods of inquiry, because it seems to be male

oriented and merely translate women’s experiences into predetermined categories, resulting in

distorted findings or even silencing of women’s voices.45

Feminist legal theorists therefore underscore the importance of women engaging their past

experience with using law and wondering why law has failed to deliver on the promises of

equality, freedom and justice.

According to Fineman,

‘Feminist theory is woman centred and is, therefore, gendered by its very nature, it takes as its

raw building materials women’s experiences. Because women live gendered lives in our culture,

any analysis that begins with their experiences necessarily must be a gendered analysis. It cannot

be gender neutral theory, nor can it have as its goal equality in the traditional, formal legal sense

of the word’.46

The need to pay particular attention to the gendered nature of women lies in the differences

between men and women which have been source of women’s oppression and subjugation in the

society and has led to impoverisation of a greater percentage of women. The gendered

experience require adequate attention especially in dealing with how to handle the issues of

women, poverty and human rights. It should be noted that human beings are the product of their

44

R Campbell and S Wasco, ‘Feminist Approaches to Social Sciences: Epistemological and Methodological Tenets’

op cit p.773-791 45

K Miner-Rubio and T Jayaratne, ‘Feminist Survey Research’ Feminist Research Practice: A Primer Hesse-Biber S

and Leavy P (eds) (California: Thousand Oaks Sage 2007) p.293 46

M Fineman, ‘Challenging Law, Establishing Differences: The Future of Feminist Legal Scholarship’ 42 Fla. L.

Rev. 25 1990,35

18

experiences, and therefore are likely to have different perspectives in form of values, beliefs and

concerns as it affect them.

6.0 The Need for Application of Feminist Research Methods to Women, Poverty and

Human Rights Law

Feminist methods require ‘situated judgement’ rather than an overarching theory to work out the

most appropriate technique at any time. In adopting ‘situated judgement’ it is an attempt to bring

to the fore the perspectives of women and the impact of the male dominated views as

unrepresentative of the experience of the half of humanity.

The purpose of ‘asking the woman question’ is to expose those features and how they operate,

and to suggest how they may be corrected; in adopting the ‘asking the woman question’ as a

method of inquiry, it affords women the opportunity to explore the inadequacies of law as a

gender neutral phenomenon in tackling women issues.

Feminists in applying feminist research methods to address women, poverty and human rights

law seek to address women’s inequality in the society and also to inform the development of

social indices. Feminists engagement with the society have altered some dominant

concepts/perspectives such as ‘neutrality’ ‘equality’ by bringing a different value and a wider

meaning that reflects the experience of women.

Feminist scholars seek to highlight and explore the gendered content of law and society, and to

probe characterisations positing themselves as neutral and more specifically as engendered.

Secondly, feminist research methods affords us a cross-disciplinary approach to challenge

traditional understandings of the social, legal, cultural and epistemological order by placing

women, their individual and their shared experiences, at the centre of their work. Thirdly,

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feminist scholars seek to expose law’s implication in women’s disadvantage with a view to

bringing about social and political change.

In applying feminist research methods to: women, poverty and human rights; it sets for itself

1) An interpretation of events in an extremely significant aspect of individualising

experience; moreover, experiences that affects women collectively having actual and

potential differences from men.

2) Experiences do not take place in a vacuum but happens within a social milieu i.e. culture

and society which provides the medium of experience. Though culture is not static, but it

can be said that culture and society has served as vehicle (s) of women oppression and

subjugation.

3) In contemporary critical thought emphasis is often placed on individual experience which

in a way serves some interest. However, reliance on individual experience negates the

principle of collective ethos. Feminist research methods thus become an agent of social

action and change in tackling women’s oppression and thus serve as the voice against the

dominant ideology in the society that neglects half of humanity.

Feminist research methods as a political and pragmatic tool explores the differences between

men and women as it applies to poverty and human rights and seeks to expose women’s

exclusion and imbalance in tackling feminisation of poverty. It is a theory and methodology that

arises from the circumstances women find themselves and the need to correct the anomaly

urgently.

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Conclusion

This paper sets for itself to argue for the need to apply feminist research methods to Women,

Poverty and Human Rights Law for future development; thus the paper established the link

between women, poverty and human rights which makes the need for an alternative approach

imperative in tackling poverty among women; the paper considers an overview of research

methods generally which form the background to feminist research methods; the paper examine

feminist research methods: its merits and demerits but argue that the merits outweigh its

demerits; the paper provided grounds on what feminist research methods entails by stating a

clear view of the research methods; it further argues for the need why feminist research methods

should be applied in future research on women, poverty and human rights.