Elements of African Bioethics in a Western Frame

10. FEMINISM AND FEMININITY: GENDER AND MOTHERHOOD IN AFRICA

~ 123 ~ CHAPTER TEN FEMINISM AND FEMININITY: GENDER AND MOTHERHOOD IN AFRICA [This chapter has been presented in several conferences and symposia over a number of years but has otherwise never been published before] ABSTRACT In this paper, it is my underlying claim that, although the Western feminist movement is largely responsible for the positive global shift in consciousness and attitudes towards women and the status of women, Africans do not need profession and/or practice of feminism to effect the emancipation and empowerment of African women. Western models and paradigms are globally very imposing and influential, especially in Africa – thanks to the cumulative impact of the various colonial legacies. But genuine non-alienating development in Africa calls for the use of all foreign and outside influences consciously as construction materials for an edifice whose foundation is purely African. Or else, there is the risk of ending up with an unstable structure whose foundation and center of gravity are not firmly in the ground but floating unstably somewhere above it. The oppression, suppression and marginalization of women in the Western world have been of a different texture, caliber and character from what can be considered to be similar or the same phenomena within other cultures. Furthermore, in attempt to liberate and emancipate themselves, Western women have acted and reacted in ways whose cumulative effect has been detrimental to femininity, family, heterosexuality and the role of the woman as mother, a role which is central in African culture and conceptions as defining and circumscribing the status of women. The emancipation and empowerment of African women can and should build upon traditional African foundations, where patriarchy could not validly be counterposed to matriarchy and where the woman, as mother, wife, daughter or sister already had a revered and enviable status, even if this did not exactly match that of men in many respects. It is my contention that Africans could safely borrow the spirit but not the letter or agenda of Western feminism. ~ 124 ~ FEMINISM AND FEMININITY: GENDER AND MOTHERHOOD IN AFRICA13 People sometimes go as far as Sokoto in search of something they have in their sokoto. (Nigerian adage) INTRODUCTION One of the more positive global developments of the out-going century has been a significant change in the over-all status of women, at least, at the conceptual level. There is no human culture in which women have not, at best, been marginalized and, at worst, suppressed and oppressed. No well-informed critical thinker would disagree with Rosaldo and Lamphere (1985, p. 3) when they state that …most and probably all contemporary societies, whatever their kinship organization, or mode of subsistence, are characterized by some degree of male dominance …none has observed a society in which women have publicly recognized power and authority surpassing that of men ….all contemporary societies are to some extent male-dominated, and although the degree and expression of female subordination vary greatly, sexual asymmetry is presently a universal fact of human social life14 . In my view, this situation derives, ultimately, from a very simple fallacy or tendency in human thought according to which might is right, an attitude paradigmatic of Western culture but not completely absent in any other culture. The fallacy is responsible for the abuse of power in all its manifold forms and categories, of which physical strength and strike force are the most impressively palpable and convincing instances. In the case of the male-female 13 I am very grateful to Dr. Ulrich Loelke of Hamburg University, Germany, and to Mrs. Alice Aghenebit-Mungwa of the Gender Information Valorization Facility – Africa (GIVaF), Cameroon, for very stimulating critical comments on the first draft of this paper. 14 Quoted in Mineke Schipper (1991): Source of all Evil: African Proverbs and Sayings on Women. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Inc. p. 5. ~ 125 ~ equation, the secret of the whole issue is the fact that, biologically, men are generally physically stronger, behaviorally more active and more aggressive than women. The fallacy is equally present in other power domains such as those of knowledge, economics, technology, information, etc., and the fight against it should be directed radically at the abuse of power in all its generic forms and manifestations. However, today, at the threshold of the 21st century/3rd millennium, there is no part of the globe where it has not been accepted, at least in principle, that the status of women needs to be improved, that...