Of Women: Giving a Lot and Receiving so Little

   

"'Muta ... Muta. Wake up! he called.' ...
     'Please get up and find me something to eat.'
     'Can't you get yourself something to eat? Is that why you wake me up at this time of the night--to find you something to eat?' ...
     'If only you had taken the trouble to look ... you would have found some food in the pot on the cooker. But you wouldn't, would you? You have a willing slave who would do that and had always done...'
     'Am I your wife or your slave in this house?' ...
     Life is so unfair to women, she thought bitterly. They give so much and receive so little. And whatever they give is taken for granted and more is demanded of them. Women are forever confronted with their duties as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. These roles are in themselves noble, valuable and thoroughly natural. But they have come to be interpreted as forms of slavery in most places, and women have over the years accepted this interpretation. And so, women have to slave from girlhood to old age--giving, serving, rearing, nurturing and slaving--with hardly any help from the opposite sex. What about men? They are forever taking, grabbing, mauling, swallowing. ...
     The relationship between a man and a women, she rationalized, must be one of symbiosis--woman giving and receiving, man receiving and giving. The giving must be reciprocal as well as the taking. Awa ought to learn to give."

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, 1996, 20-24

"The Departure," in Rituals and Departures

Nigerian Feminism: An Alternative Voice

(By Esther Chioma Uwandu) - In discussing the issues of women in relation to various factors, what comes to mind is the term “feminism”. And feminism is the belief that men and women deserve equal rights and opportunities in all spheres of life. It aims at defining, establishing and defending equal opportunities for women. It also denotes the activities of women and male “sympathizers”, and its aim is to combat all forms of discrimination -social, personal, economic, legal, health, literary, which women suffer simply because of their sex.
          Essentially, feminism is two things. First, it is a theoretical paradigm in social theory that seeks to advocate and enhance women’s emancipation and equality with regard to gender; hence, feminism encompasses many varied activities and contexts. According to Elizabeth Ogini in Feminism and Black Women’s Creative Writing (1996), feminism has two main ‘axes’. As a belief, it emphasizes equality for men and women in all areas among which are legal, economic, political and social affairs. As a social movement, it advocates gender equality and is widely known as woman’s liberation or women’s rights movement.