GENERATIONS AND GENDER DISCOURSE IN NIGERIAN DRAMA; AN X-RAY OF CULTURE IN SELECTED WORKS

Gender discourse is a global concern. The patriarchal nature of the Nigerian society has kept the female gender perpetually marginalized. Being a federation with a conglomeration of cultures, the society assigns second fiddle role to females thus creating gender imbalance in significant roles that will engender development in a globalize world. Certain cultural imperatives interfere with human rights especially when they concern differences in age and perception thereby creating conflict among generations. Using the selected works of John Pepper Clark, Tess Onwueme, James Ene Henshaw, Femi Osofisan and Zulu Sofola as footstools. Two broad areas were explored in the paper; Generation Conflict and Gender Discourse Under generation conflict, several issues were discoursed in relation to disparity in the perception of people of different ages such as Command Social Prejudice, Inter-Communal and Family Feud and Communal Value Standard. In like manner, Gender Discourse explode Gender, Socialization and Societal Development, Marriage and the Girl-Child, Gender Mainstreaming and Empowerment for further development of Nigeria, Communal social prejudice is the main concern of Tess Onwueme's Broken Calabash and J.P Clark's The Masquerade just as Henshaw's This is Our Chance, Soyinka's Farewell to a Cannibal Rage focus on the interrelatedness of inter-communal and family feud to the protagonists and society at large. other issues discussed in the paper in relation to the Nigerian societal development present Socialization, freedom, liberation as commitments to gender mainstreaming. The summation of the interactive discourse of the above topic is the presentation of the way forward.