CHAPTER TWO: GENDER CONSTRUCT
IN AFRICA

Muhammad Alkali

2.0    The African Thinking

Two things should be made clear from the onset. ‘Feminist gender’ are two loaded terms I use closely by each other and interchangeably because I follow the repackaging of Hamersley and Atkinson (1983:1) who interpret the term ‘ethnography’ in a convenient liberal manner, undisturbed about what constitutes its examples; no hard-and-fast distinction between ethnographer and other qualitative researchers are made since essentially all qualitative researchers are, for example, participant observers. Or like Butler, who breaks the supposed links between ‘sex and gender’ so that gender and desire can be ‘flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors’ (see, Murphy 2018). I also make no deliberate distinction between gender and feminism (which, in truth, the dividing line is thin) since their objective is to achieve both woman and human dignity and more so as arising new ideas and answers to emerging feminist or gender questions are converging at a very fluid and flexible ground that is leading to harmonious livelihood between the sexes.

Secondly, feminism and/or gender is no longer the concern of the female class only. Men are hugely trying everywhere across the world to reread the misery of male-dominant and female-submissive dynamics. Perhaps, they do this because it has been realised that since creation days, men have ungraciously succeeded through social constructs in turning the world to their advantage over and above women; it has been a patriarchal world. If this proposition is true, men seem to have realised that they need to undo what they did to the female world. Man, since ages has devastatingly dealt with the female world. Everything appears in his advantage. It is in this respect that the conception of the term feminism has attained various statuses by both sexes and therefore, not easy to define in an instant. Although most feminists have accepted the fact of a need for adequate definition, it is having been very impossible as there has been less consensus on a single definition of feminism. The basic orientation is continuously that feminism has come to mean various things for various people, even if it is gradually heading towards a new direction, a direction of new hope, new resolution, new idea, where concrete results seem promising. We shall discuss this in some detail later.

Because of the several connotations, it should be necessary at the outset of this Chapter also to indicate very briefly how feminism is looked at in this book. In the years past and recent, it has been largely realised that belittling women have repercussions of unimaginable largeness. For this reason, feminism has risen to radical positions but happily, is increasingly settling for non-confrontational redress which opposes both masculinity and femininity. Feminism today is gradually becoming a gender course that deals with sexual difference without constituting an opposition to either of the sexes since it is both the concern of the two sexes. Women regain their opportunities without recourse to oppositional feminism, while at the same time not seen as underdogs.

Corollary, there are emerging qualifications of feminism, many adjectivals to feminism like ‘New Feminism’ (Alkali & Kehinde, 2016 & 2010; Allen, 2006) (not Natasha Walter’s The New Feminism, 1998 which is man-hating), and ‘True Feminism’ (Steady, 1985:8), which basically are indicative of the fact that all has not been well with the practice of the concept. As a result of this, many writers do not even want to be addressed to the chemistry of feminism; they distance themselves from being called feminists.

Nigeria’s male feminist writer, Abubakar Gimba, for example, is dangerously suspicious of anyone calling him a feminist. In an interview with Ode (2000:1), he pointedly asked the world not to bring him close to the arithmetic of feminism. The reason is not far-fetched. Several nuances of meaning, applications, and engaging debate have arisen by women scholars and feminists from all over the world on the concept. People shy away from the term feminism because it has sadly come to be associated with radicalism, lesbianism, pornography, etc. It is a paradox of exercise of unlimited freedom. Female feminists themselves are not left out in this distancing with feminism. Esther Chioma Uwandu) says the Nigerian female feminist, Buchi Emecheta, wearily and warily describes her connection with feminism thus,

Being a woman, and African born, I see things through an African woman’s eyes ... I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist. But if I am now a feminist then I am an African feminist with a small ‘f’ (Emecheta 175 cited in Uwandu, 2018).

Following the above, Nwapa said that if feminism is about ‘possibilities’ and ‘choices’,

“I will go all out and say that I am a feminist with a big ‘f’ ”
(Flora Nwapa cited in Obioma Nnaemeka, 1995: 83).

There is thus absolute confusion between the big ‘F’ and the small ‘f’. Others have pointed to the big ‘F’ as rebellious, injurious, and disrespectful, while the small ‘f’ is the subtle feminism. Contributing on the small ‘f’, the Ghanaian female writer, Ama Ata Aidoo explains that African women are not and cannot be,

…acting today as daughters and grand-daughters of women who always refused to keep quiet’. In consequence, she insists, I really refuse to be told I am learning feminism from abroad….

(Aidoo, 1986: 183).

These have only rightly pointed to a signification that feminism needs to be reworked and renamed for more fruitful results.

2.1    Naming and Misnaming in Feminism

Naming and misnaming have followed the concept of feminism through and through. And name has ontological significance to mankind. To name a concept called feminism is to attach some serious definition to it. If we say the name is feminism and feminism is the name, it must be found somewhere the ontological significance. Inscribing it to women’s struggle would not only thwart the illusion of sexism as a business of both male and female but also encourage individuation, sectionalism, parochialism, and selfishness in a world that is increasingly becoming a global village for mankind.

Writing on Black women’s concerns, as an example, Myra K. McMurry discusses Maya Angelou’s autobiography which points at the dangers of misnaming, especially for a Black person,

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being “called out of his name”. It was a dangerous practice to call [Negroes] anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of there having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots, and spooks

(Angelou 1993:91cited in McMurry (2022: 111).

Furthermore, a significant number of African cosmologies demonstrate the profound importance of names. Therefore, in Black Africa, Malaysia, and numerous other cultures, an individual’s name carries a sacred significance. Ruth Finnegan in her work, Oral Literature in Africa highlights that names possess a ‘greater literary interest than might at first appear’ (470). Names hold a unique position in many global communities, as individuals often embody the image conveyed in by the meaning of their names. For example, most Nupe names in Nigeria are loaded with meanings. Names like Bannachi, Balikali, Badoko, Bakatsa, etc. significantly carry prefixes, a Nupe respectful allusion to the person being addressed. The ‘Ba’ prefix is a shortcut in many respects; for Baba as father – an elder who lives in London, for example, will be respectfully called Balondon i.e. Londoner, the owner (as in owner of a horse - Badoko or who lives in Katcha - Bakatcha), etc. In the Holy Qur’an also, Allah gives ontological names to His attributes. He has ninety-nine (99) special names. He is personally or properly called Allah. He is Arrahman – The Most Beneficent, Arraheem – The Most Merciful, Al-Malik - The Sovereign Lord, Al-Quddoos - The Holy, As-Salaam - The Source of Peace, Al-Mu'min - Guardian of Faith, Al-Muhaimin - The Protector - Al-Azeez - The Mighty, Al-Jabbaar - The Compeller, Al-Mutakabbir - The Majestic, Al-Khaaliq - The Creator, Al-Bari' - The Maker, Al-Musawwir - The Fashioner, Al-Ghaffaar - The Great Forgiver, Al-Qahhaar - The Subduer, Al-Wahhaab - The Bestower, Al-Razzaaq - The Sustainer, Al-Fattaah - The Opener, etc. these are names always suiting a particular intent and mission of man in the world so that man can call out to Him for assistance. In ‘How Naming and Defining Shape Gender Relations’, Van Leeuwen et al. (1993) singled out naming as crucial in gender politics,

Naming and defining are two of the most powerful acts of human speech. When something is named, it takes on a fuller reality. It can be talked about. It has presence

(Van Leeuwen et al. 1993: 345).

Therefore, I attempt to project the naming of feminism in its proper terms — aspirations, struggles, and occupation — to reflect their indisputable goal in the face of a forced identity emanating from activities of feminist theories and interpretations. Naming and defining it correctly can assist us in appreciating the spiritual relevance and significance of their creative production or strength. Feminism, then, is here reintegrated into world cultures so as to destroy the false images given to it by insensitivity, excessiveness, and outright stubbornness, heading simply towards human destruction.

2.2    Colonial and Postcolonial Literary Dialogues

Europe Supported by Africa & America
By William Blake

Engravings for J. G. Stedman, Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild coast of South America; from the year 1772, to 1777. Published in London, 1796.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women’s current challenges to building egalitarian societies are related to aspects of equity, peace, compromise, and complementarity, which is emerging from centuries of assault and banter and exploitation of various kinds. This was carried through to the period of political or structural integration within capitalism. I talk of colonisation. Changes in socio-political arrangement of societies and economy still made women a relegated class in the new system. Whether through the challenges and concerns faced by white, black, or coloured women, the story remains the same. Men and women need then to harness women’s innate capabilities in a manner that aligns with their current and future requirements, without subjecting them to harmful ideologies. Each literary creation possesses its own distinct existence, emerging from a unique history, specific experiences, and cultural traditions. Consequently, every work will invariably resonate with elements that are relevant to its developmental context. The Nigerian Chinua Achebe in Morning Yet on Creation Day writes,

every literature must seek the things that belong unto its peace, it must, in other words, speak of a particular place, evolve out of the necessities of its history, past and current, and aspirations and destiny of its people (7).

It is noteworthy that while white women may not have been the primary perpetrators of enslavement towards black or coloured females during the era of slavery, they still played a role in the operation within slaveholding societies, albeit from a secondary position. They were then to be sympathised with for this historical substance of plural implications of subjugating same sex (both deceived and ‘willing’), because they were (un)knowingly used to aid and abet injuries to womankind as they use mistresses’ position which strengthened patriarchy in the colonial administration. Consider Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the 21 Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House and also Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. They give insight into the cold-blooded wars that existed between black slave women and white slave mistresses.

The graphic illustration of the three women above (for which I am grateful to the website on ‘colonial and post-colonial dialogues’ in the same way as Chinua Achebe is grateful to William Butler Yeats for his poem, ‘The Second Coming’, where Achebe culled the title of his famous novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) from which we use to exemplify Achebe’s sheer wickedness on women emancipation) is a visionary Blake engraving, which gives to the world an unending dialogue between the colonized and the colonizer. While it appears (albeit evasively) to be a harmonious relationship among three equal sisters with Europe in a limp balance holding the rope that connects the three continents, it is not difficult to see beyond that. The other hand conspicuously clenches the hand of the African sister in sisterly equality. It is mused that this is a striking innovation in the concept of the connection between continents, exemplifying Blake’s abolitionist viewpoint (source: David Hart’s engraving above); the bond between the three women is only, perhaps, representative of the economics of objective; tobacco business, it is observed. I interpret this to be the on-going onslaught; a damaging consequence left over by, and which was started by, Europe, and things have perfectly fallen apart, (Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, 1958) as the centre can no longer hold for women. By implication, white women in relish preserved their mistress places under insensitive colonial rule.

Further, the engraving predicts in the limping white sister that there would be no white sister without a black or coloured sister, and/or no Europe without Africa. If this assumption is true, the West must answer the questions of the underdevelopment of the continent, and the injuries of the black sister. The engraving poses to ask, where lies the moral conscience of this exploitative paradigm? Africans have been grappling with the realities of women's liberation for development, transforming their own lives in a struggle to replace and reshape masculinism, while at the same time holding women responsible for their complacency.

Therefore, historically, traditionally, and because of the cultural values of various women’s fight for respect for human dignity, it would only be fair to look at feminism holistically and not parochially. This feminism would then be the effort where the two sexes look at each other as bedmates in complementation, leading further to a harmonious global village.

2.3    Brief History

The world has been populated by the mythic pact of women as underdogs, which needless to say, needs a reorientation, further leading to the philosophy of equity and/or equality between the sexes on social, economic, and political equality mixes. Feminism is an activism for women’s rights and interests that negates the notion that women are supposedly materials for confinement in the home, as public life is a special reserve for men. At every opportunity, there is a need to reshape the social construct of women. Often, the woman had to seek for her right rudely to better her lot. This is not a new thing in the world.

Women began to come together to claim their rights for ages. Evidence of organised riots by women is traceable to the earliest century, the 3rd Century BC, when, in Rome, women organised themselves against Consul Marcus Porcius Cato. They successfully blocked all entrances to the Forum on Capitoline Hill. They opposed attempt to repeal laws that delimit women's use of expensive goods. Cato in holding against women strongly observed that ‘If they are victorious now, what will they not attempt? As soon as they begin to be your equals, they will have become your superiors.’

For most of recorded history, only a few voices were heard against the inferiority jinx of women. Then, the first feminist philosopher, Christine de Pisan in late 14th and early 15th Century France, shames the devil by challenging prevailing attitudes toward women with a bold call for female education. Then, in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft in her A Vindication of the Rights of Women glaringly told the world that women were men’s match, challenging the notion that women exist only to please men.

Discussions of feminism are always incomplete without mentioning the interwar years when Virginia Woolf was already a very significant feminist personage in London literary society. She was an English feminist, novelist, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories. A foremost modernist literary figure of the twentieth century, she is most memorable for her novel, A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. Her other famous novels in chronology include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), which were lectures she gave at women’s colleges at Cambridge University. Recognised for her creation of a fictional female counterpart to William Shakespeare named Judith, Virginia Woolf employed this character, sometimes sarcastic manner, to convey her message. Woolf emerged as a pioneering and influential author in the 20th century. In certain novels she departed from traditional plot and structure, instead utilising stream-of-consciousness narrative to highlight the psychological dimensions of her characters. Her works explore themes such as class hierarchy, gender relations, and the repercussions of war. In her Orlando: A Biography (1928), she can be read as contributing to gender as the dignity of both sexes.

Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is very opposite of what it is above … Ch.4.

Virginia Woolf's past, present, and future are a subject of extensive feminist discourse and debate, particularly concerning the sexual abuse inflicted upon her at the hands of her half-brother, who after the invalid state of her mother, half-brother, George Duckworth, became not only the father of the house but also her lover too. He would night after night visit his sister out of very questionable consolation. Similarly, Virginia Woolf’s pacifist political beliefs; aligned with the Bloomsbury Group, sparked contentious debates and controversy. From her Three Guineas (1931),

Therefore, if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct that I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. “For,” the outsider will say, “in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” - Ch. 3.

Regardless of the polemic, or because of it, Woolf’s extensive novels, diaries, critical reviews, letters, essays, and short stories have become a subject of significant scholarly debate in feminism well into the 21st Century (Geoffrey. M. Boynton 580). The ethos of the Bloomsburiana group fostered a liberal approach towards sexuality. In 1922, Woolf crossed paths with Vita Sackville-West, a writer and gardener, and after some initial uncertainty, they embarked on a sexual relationship (the beginnings of lesbianism, you might add) (Boynton 580). But their affair eventually came to an end, and despite this, the two women maintained their friendship until Woolf's passing.

Some thirty years later, 1969 to be precise, there arose the dire need for women to come together and claim their own. This was harnessed by both Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt. The idea got strengthened by Vivian Gornik’s article, "The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs", Village Voice. The essay invited women to reassess women’s plight and damn the devil by indicating interest for the formation of women’s group on women’s plight. In an effrontery, the essay also included contact address and phone number for the formation. This bold step succeeded in raising interests from a large number of prospective members.

Then New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) was formed with the objective of undoing men’s observable consciousness in dominating women in order to strengthen their masculine ego, but also held women culpable as they accepted their lot, their complacency (NYRF, 1969). People rose to challenge this phenomenon of possession of historical substance of a plural implications of subjugation, both coerced and ‘willing’ and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) implicates feminism as a site for political struggle in its ‘power-structured relationships’. The personal was actually political, she stresses. In the same 1970, Shulamith Firestone, building on 1969 call founded the NYRF.

In her work The Dialectic of Sex, Firestone introduces a new trend in feminism observing that love is, unfortunately, a strong factor that disadvantages women by wrongly or rightly in their socio-economic and political struggles. This perspective informs on how love can dynamically initiate intimate bonds between women and the men they love, who simultaneously act as their oppressors! A problem is thus caused; what is the approach to managing a relationship with the man you love, because you must love? This observation introduces a throw of spanner into the engine. It points to reassessment of strategy. Could this be what has given impetus to feminisms in different continents?

It was not until the 20th century that Africa, Asia, and Latin America got to hear of European and American feminism. When it began to gather momentum, tensions between women from developing and developed nations started to surface in international conferences, notably during the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, where these conflicts became particularly evident, especially concerning Africa. Sadly, it transpired to be something entirely different; it turned out to reconsider the conception of feminism by arriving at a new perspective. Protests were staged by women from the Third World outside the venue as they held the belief that the agenda had been completely taken over by Americans and Europeans. The demonstrators had anticipated that the Conference would address the issue of how underdevelopment hindered women’s progress. However, the Conference organisers opted on matters related to abortion and contraception. Women of the Third World couldn’t connect contraception and abortion to their ailing children, who were perishing due to thirst, starvation, and armed conflict, as expressed by Azizah al-Hibri, a law professor and specialist researcher on the rights of Muslim women. And these continental issues led to continental possibilities in feminism, such as African feminism, Indian feminism, etc. More theories and approaches have been born.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. (1958). Things Fall Apart, London: Heinemann.

---. (1975). Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. Garden city, New York: Doubleday.

Aidoo, Ama Ata. (1986). From the Discussion: Feminism with a small ‘f’! Criticism and Ideology: Second African Writers’ Conference, Stockholm 1986. Ed. Kirsten.

Alkali, Muhammad. (2010). “The Poetics of Feminism in the Descendants and Sacred Apples: A Religious Perspective, Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association (JNESA):  118-32.

Alkali, Muhammad and John Kehinde Olorunshola. (2016). A New Feminist Reading of Lola Shoneyin’s the Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, Journal of the Literary Society of Nigeria, A Professional/Association Journal. Issue 8:  169-82.

Boynton, Geoffrey. M. (2005). Attention and visual perception, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15(4), 465–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2005.06.009

Finnegan, Ruth. (2012). Oral Literature in Africa, Open Book Publishers.

Firestone, Shulamith. (1970). The Dialectic of Sex, New York: William Morrow.

McMurry, Myra K. (2022). Role-Playing as Art in Maya Angelou's Caged Bird, South Atlantic Bulletin 41(2), May 1976: 106–11.

Millett, Kate. (1970). Sexual Politics, Doubleday Publishers.

Murphy, A. (2018). Butler, Judith (1956–). In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor and Francis. Retrieved 5 Oct. 2022, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/
butler-judith-1956/v-1 doi:10.4324/0123456789-DD3599-1

Nnaemeka, Obioma. Feminism, Rebellious Women, and Cultural Boundaries: Rereading Flora Nwapa and Her Compatriots, Research in African Literatures, 26(2). Indiana University Press,  80-113, 1995.

Ode, Sunday. (2002): ‘I’m not a FEMINIST’, Interview with Abubakar Gimba. Golden Footprints of the Mandarin, (A Collection of Interviews and Essays), Ezekiel Fajenyo and Sina Oladeinde (Eds), Ibadan: Crescent Books Ltd.

Uwandu, Esther Chioma. (2018). “Nigerian Feminism as Alternative Voice in Feminist Discourse”, The Guardian, https://guardian.ng/art/nigerian-feminism-as-alternative-voice-in-feminist-discourse /

Van Leeuwen, Mary Stewart, et.al. (Eds.). (1993). After Eden: Facing the Challenge of Gender Reconciliation, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishers.

Woolf, Virginia. (1929). A Room of One's Own. London: Hogarth Publishers.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Simon & SchusterPublishers.