Overcoming Women's Subordination in the Igbo African Culture and in the Catholic Church: Envisioning an Inclusive Theology with Reference to Women

This dissertation examines the problem of women's cultural subordination within the context of African history as well as United Nations' global facts and statistics about women. This scholarly work is situated in concrete research through personal interviews with Igbo African women living in the United States. It focuses on the subtle biblical and cultural myths by which women are manipulated to accept their own oppression, to cooperate in maintaining it, and to resist their liberation. The work identifies these cultural and religious myths which elude the attention of many advocates of women's cause. It reconstructs these paradigms in the light of the inclusive and egalitarian ethos of the early Jesus' movement and pre-colonial Igbo African society as resources for women's empowerment today. In the light of her findings, the author makes some very strong proposals, which have high potentials for overcoming the pervasive and extensive negative effects of women's cultural subordination worldwide.