-Maimouna is a bright five year old Muslim girl living in Senegal with her small family consisting of her parents and two older brothers. She also had an older sister, Hadiza, who, at seventeen, was brutally murdered for being seen leaving a male friend’s house in the evening unaccompanied. Nothing was done about it, although everyone knew who had been behind the murder: her older brothers who didn’t want her to bring shame to the family by eventually having a bad reputation. This was their reason despite the fact that they knew she was of good repute and chaste. As a result, Maimouna was not allowed to go to school, and was closed off to the world.
-Kelechi hated cleaning more than anything in the world, but it was more preferable to clean and sweep the entire compound than to have her mother yelling over her head that she had better be happy about doing domestic work because one day very soon she would get married and being homely was her sole purpose on earth. She had to sweep the compound and everyone’s room in the house and prepare everyone’s food before she left for the nearby secondary school every morning. It wasn’t like she was ultimately missing out anyway; once she finished the twelfth grade, her parent’s would force her out of school to get married to pay her little brothers' way through school until they could get back on their feet. This , her worse nightmare because the suitor on her father’s mind was twice her age and she couldn’t imagine life with him. What’s more, she loved school and hoped feebly that she would get to go to the university to study law. But her father was not wasting money on someone who would eventually leave for another man’s house.
The first scenario looks like an excerpt you would see in a newspaper published in 1970. The second scenario sounds like a typical gossip story for those living in rural Igbo land back in the 30s. Sadly, this is not the case. These are diluted examples of events that occur in the lives of females living in present-day African society.
The major problem with African society in relation to its female population is that it belittles them. This is done in order to subdue the females and drill into their heads that their duty in life and society is on fact subordination. Why has this been so? That’s obvious: in order to achieve male dominance over everything. In African society, we women are the property of men.
Before I go on to talk about the problems with the African female, let me just state that, as unbiased as I try to be, I am not a feminist and actually think of myself as anti-feminist. I don’t support outright feminism or aggressive movements made by women who tend to be bitter against all things “men” and who think advocating for the right to be promiscuous without being called sluts, to not have to be submissive to their husbands, but rather rebellious, and to demoralize society is permissible in the name of feminism. That’s not what this is. I respect both men and women equally. This article is intended to aid the removal of the negative stereotypes women are burdened with.
The problem with the African girl is that she thinks lowly of herself. She is actually raised to be ashamed of herself and her femininity, of the fact that she was made female and not male. This frame of mind stays with her and she ends up passing it on to her own daughters and sons. Mothers generally have the job of training the children and instilling values. When a mother trains her daughters to believe themselves inferior to their brothers and other men, they have no audacity to act otherwise because they know not otherwise. And so the deadly cycle continues.
It is a normal thing to hear parents scolding their daughters over things boys usually get away with. The worse I hate- and Chimamanda Adichie once mentioned this in one of her conferences- is when I am reclining on the sofa, probably reading a book, and the next thing I hear from an elder is, “Close your legs!” or “Sit like a woman!” These sharp rebukes never cease to baffle me. What is it between my legs that so offends the people of society? God created my female offense in His image, last I checked, and nowhere in His holy book did I see a manual on the proper way for women to sit while in the comfort of their own house, because I don’t mean in public. To be frank, it is the boy who should be told to close his legs because…well…his own offense is prominent. Why do mothers, instead of taking initiative to do away with negative traditions imposed on females, help to further enslave themselves and their daughters into thinking that way? Before we can see change in our society, there should first be a renewing of the mind.
Another problem with the African girl is that she believes her only source of power to be her sexual prowess. I often hear girls my age and older say, “I use what I have to get what I want.” What a thought! The worse part is that whenever they say this they aren’t talking about using their brains, but rather their sexuality. Hollywood celebrities and social media make this kind of thinking popular, with the likes of Nicki Minaj and many other female singers and male rap artists who portray women and even men as sex objects who should have no other agenda but to slavishly please the opposite sex, no strings attached. We blame females for being “runz girls” or high-class prostitutes who sell their bodies for sex, but is it really their faults? When we all have a hand in belittling girls to see their worth only when attached to a man, what else should we expect?
Is it right to limit our girls to only cooking, cleaning, and popping out babies faster than the speed of light? Let’s wise up. We can only get what we give out. Once we begin to raise our daughters and teach our girls that they have the ability to set their goals beyond the sky and learn to impact not only just their future families, but the world. Then, and not before, will they begin to have more respect for themselves.
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