Mariama Ba And Sindiwe Magona

“Women and Gender in Islam” by Leila Ahmed was published in 1992, at a time when research on Arab women was a young, newly emerging field of study. Leila Ahmed is an Egyptian American writer and feminist. Her text “Women and Gender in Islam” targets proclaimed feminists, both western and non-western, as the intended audience. The text is involved with the discourse of gender, the discourses of women, the discourses of feminist, and colonial and post-colonial discourses.

In Khaled Hosseini 's A Thousand Splendid Suns, Henrik Isben 's A Doll 's House, and Kamala Markandaya 's Nectar in a Sieve, women face obstacles that disempower and silence them due to Men 's treatment of women, the societal view of women, and the objectification of women. Within the literary works analyzed this semester, disempowerment is a persisting theme that roots from the various obstacles and hardships women encounter. The woman 's ability to overcome this disempowerment is particularly challenging due to being oppressed by their peers, specifically men. Women countlessly serve as victims of verbal and physical abuse under their husbands, thus contributing to the idea of female inferiority. There are various stereotypical roles challenged between men and women in society leading to discrimination of women. The preconceived notions of women 's roles in society arise from those within society. During this time era, most of society depicts women as uneducated, essentially lacking economical and social opportunities, making the female population highly vulnerable to all types of exploitation. Nonetheless, men in these literary works display objectifying and degrading attitudes towards those of the female gender. The objectification of women notably dehumanizes the female population. Within these literary works, the authors exemplify this reality of obstacles that disempower and silence women. Though these women fight for their liberation and equality, they are victims of

Women, unfortunately, have been very discriminated against, even in this century. Women are so cruelly thought of that now, women see nothing wrong with mental and physical cruelty towards them. Since the status of women in Africa, is so low, it has caused many men to overpower women…physically. More

Kristen Lewis’ article, “Malala the Powerful” was about how a girl as shot in the head by the terrorist group, the Taliban because she was using her voice to stand up and say everyone deserves an education, especially girls. In Pakistan, the religion is strict therefore the Taliban decided to control the government, that made life for women and girls brutal. The Taliban ordered that girls were not allowed to attend school. Malala completely disagreed so she used her voice on the internet incognito to bring awareness about what was happening. The Taliban was out of control, Malala’s family was forced to move South. With all the commotion she revealed her identity, making her well known world wide. Once news broke on who she was, the Taliban

As time passed, European domination drastically altered the African landscape – both physically and culturally. Traditional roles, practices, and beliefs were either completely subverted or modified to fall in line with European cultural ideals. Doubtlessly, this process of subjugation worked to the detriment of native populations throughout the continent. Even though all members of indigenous communities have suffered under this system, African women remain especially vulnerable to its harmful effects. As Mary Kolawole points out in her comprehensive work, Womanism and African Consciousness, these women must confront a set of oppressions unique to their position as both black Africans and women. During her discussion of African women’s current struggle for recognition, Kolawole argues that, although colonialism displaced many African traditions, the patriarchal social structure remained. In many ways, she holds, European colonization widened the rift between African men and women even further (Kolawole 34). Although African and European traditions share in the elevation of the male over the female, most African cultures offered women a greater position of respect within society, as well as more “positive avenues of self-liberation” than were available to European women

The description of women provided in Olaudah Equiano's and Venture Smith's narratives compared to the European's descriptions of indigenous and African women provided in Jennifer Morgan's paper are distinctive. Equiano and Smith write highly of their mothers while Europeans talk repulsively about African and indigenous women. As a reader, one can infer many opinions about each of the writer's attitudes about the expected gender norms for women at that time such as caretaking, breastfeeding or working. The European perspective utilizes their claim to authority on women through dehumanizing different races and converting them into Christians.

Women and men have very different roles in a Malian society. These different roles are displayed in the book, Sundiata. Women in this society are seen as a less important and unequal to men. The men hold more authority and higher positions. Women do not have very many rights, and are unable to have positions of power.

Even though we live in a modern world with many technological advancements, women oppression is still a plague around the world that seems to never stop or end in many different societies a woman is only accepted or considered good not when she speaks up or contribute to something that is against this but when she accepts this oppression and stay quit. In Woman at point zero, Nawal Al Saadawi has expressed her concern about women's oppression. In her piece of work, there were many attempts to raise awareness to this issue by giving an example of a woman’s life that was ruined by it. This issue should bring women together since they share the same problem and help each other and empower themselves in order to fight against this discrimination

Rudolf Gaudio’s Allah Made Us tells the story of how sexual outlaws and Islamic sociocultural norms coexisted and produced a complex sociolinguistic world in Kano and other cities in Northern Nigeria, a Muslim West African region. Once a center of Islamic emirates, interreligious interaction and a cultural hub, the advent of British colonialism and Islamic revivalism facilitated the growth of an intolerant environment in Nigeria, operating as a kind of “modernistic moralism” that disorganized bori (spirit possession) practices and marginalized a once thriving sexual community known as ‘yan daudu (p. 9). The broader argument throughout Gaudio’s book is that sociolinguistic practices— so often framed as insignificant identity markers to shape cultural or sexual citizenships— are integral to both. The result is an intervention to how we understand the relationship between gendered language and non-normative identities in Northern Nigeria, and a narrative of how the political potential of language, often understood as neutral, is deeply embedded as “a medium of social participation and an object of criticism and control” (p. 8). Beyond providing a rich, vivid ethnography of ‘yan daudu, the book also traces how moral purification and subcultures shape possibilities in present-day Nigeria.

Gender roles govern the way that most of the world’s population interact with one another. Many African cultures uphold deeply patriarchal gender roles which dictate how women and men interact with one another. Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, a staunch feminist, gives readers a look into Nigerian gender roles in her short story Birdsong. Her writing in Birdsong and her TEDtalks explore and expose how these gender roles are harmful and how important it is for many stories of young women of color to be heard.

In the novel Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian author explores a number of issues such as religious absolutism, egalitarianism, feminism, domestic violence, politics and colonialism which in turn all highlight the main ideology of patriarchal power. By referring to the Oxford dictionary, the adjective ‘Patriarchal’ is described as “something relating to or denoting a system of society or government controlled by men.” In this specifically powerful novel, it refers to an organized society where the males are the heads of the families and the men are considered the “Fathers of the human race.” Adichie exposes a society that suffers devastation as an effect of total patriarchal control and intolerance within the family, the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the education and the state. Through the representation of the characters, she promotes the principle of a political system in which unrestricted power is in a dictator, and she identifies contrasting perceptions of religion, race, culture, spirituality, gender roles and the abuse of power. Throughout the novel, the reader is

Traditional and cultural practices reinforce the power of men in African societies and are often embraced without any questioning. Tambu, is denied access to education because she is a girl. Tambu’s father’s refusal to further her education is influenced by cultural assumptions, which consider education to be a male preserve. Tambu’s

These strong, and independent African women authors use insightful and educational language, which invites the western world to be a part of their world through the power of literature. One of the

In Of Woman Born (1977), Adrienne Rich unwittingly captures all the nuances of the African traditional social milieu when she describes patriarchy as:

During the 1960’s disproportionate gender roles characterized post-colonial Rhodesia. The African patriarchy described in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s acclaimed novel, Nervous Conditions, promotes feminist theory through the portrayal of marginalized women in Zimbabwe. Regardless of class or social prowess, women were not permitted the same liberties and regarded with the same respect as their male counterparts. Women found themselves relegated to the positions of household servants, and excluded from the labor markets by the societies males. (Mbatha 23) Female characters of the novel consistently struggle with “nervous conditions” around males, stemming from years of oppression under the Shona power system. Throughout her novel, Nervous Conditions, Dangarembga exemplifies the various forms of oppression faced by Shona women as well as methods they utilized to resist the oppressive male patriarchy.