Gendered Struggles for Drinking/Leisure Spaces

Abstract

Public leisure spaces such as bars, pubs, and nightclubs are gendered landscapes in Nigeria. However, scholars are yet to explore the contestations among men and women regarding whose right it is to occupy these spaces for drinking and other leisure activities. Drawing on ‘space’ and ‘leisure’ scripts, this chapter analyses the gendering of drinking geographies, highlighting how participants negotiated and navigated the gendered leisure landscapes in contemporary Nigeria. Most men reinscribed and reproduced exclusionary norms that proscribed women from occupying ‘masculinist’ leisure spaces. These men argued that women who occupy public spaces like bars or nightclubs are ‘irresponsible’ and often mistaken as sex workers and, thus, are not marriable. Furthermore, they stressed that while men’s public drunkenness may be overlooked, inebriated women attract public outcry and stigma that extends to their families. Drawing on gender-egalitarian and equality perspectives and other subjective narratives, most young women contested and resisted these proscriptions, arguing that public drinking should be gender-blind and inclusionary. In contrast, others who enacted passivity and ‘respectable’ femininity supported the men’s narratives that opposed women’s public leisure, but this may have been due to fear of stigma and other social sanctions. The chapter demonstrates how the local norms and social structures promote constraints that suppress women’s agency, exposing them to potential consequences of secret drinking and stigmatisation.