Negotiating empowerment: Women and identity in Nigeria

This paper focuses on Women’s empowerment within the context of identity mobilization in Africa using as case study the leading Muslim women’s association in Nigeria, Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN). It argues that Muslim women have been able to create an opening for themselves within the structure of Islam in Nigeria in recent times through the use of the discourse of Islamic reform but that such discourse of reform displays contradictions which opens it to being used as a source of legitimacy by more extreme fundamentalist actors with negative impact on the goal of women’s empowerment.    Key words: Islamic, identity, Nigeria, women, Muslim.