Nollywood actress Etinosa has thrown her weight behind a conversation that many Nigerian women have had in private but rarely get to voice publicly, calling out the widespread practice of denying women entry into clubs, lounges and hotels simply because they arrived without a male companion.
The actress took to her Instagram page to address feminists directly, urging them to add this particular fight to their agenda. In her post, she described the restriction as one of the more glaring double standards that women in Nigeria continue to face, noting that men walk freely in and out of the same spaces without being stopped or questioned by anyone at the door.
“I fight it anywhere I go but I can’t do it alone,” she wrote, making clear that this is not just a general grievance but something she has personally encountered and pushed back against on multiple occasions.
What gives her post even more weight is the personal context behind it. Etinosa revealed that during a particularly difficult period in her marriage, she would visit clubs and bars as a way of coping with the emotional strain she was going through. Rather than being allowed to enter and have a quiet drink in peace, she was repeatedly turned away at the entrance because she had no man accompanying her.
She was pointed in pushing back against the assumption that drives such policies, stating plainly that a woman walking into a club alone is not automatically there for commercial purposes. The stereotype, she argued, is both unfair and insulting, and the fact that it continues to inform security decisions at these establishments says a great deal about how women are still perceived in certain spaces.
The post has since drawn attention online, with many women sharing their own experiences of being turned away or made to feel unwelcome at venues for the same reason.
