Should We All Be Feminists?

Please do not call yourself a feminist, feminism is not in our culture, feminism means you hate men, feminists are unhappy women who cannot find a husband. These are words of unsolicited advice given to award-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi in the wake of her novel Purple Hibiscus in 2003. These words visualize just how much the word feminist has a negative connotation attached to it.

In her book, We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda reminisces about her first taste of gender inequality at play. She was denied the opportunity to be class monitor, despite scoring the highest, because the class monitor had to be a boy. Fast-forward to modern times, we see this inequality still in practice when a man and woman do the same job, being equally qualified but the man is paid more because ¨he is a man¨.

In this contemporary age, there are more opportunities for women as a result of policy and law changes, which is an important step towards the right direction. However, the change of attitude and mindset of how we perceive and value gender still remains a concern. Gender is not an easy conversation to have for both men and women and is normally met with a lot of resistance, A lot of people still view gender as form of structured roles in society. Men often do not think of gender, nor notice the challenges regarding gender and this is part of the problem because no action is taken to change the situation.

Chimamanda advocates for changing the narrative around how we view the success of women. She states that the success of women should not be a cause of intimidation and threat to the man. But rather we should encourage women to grow, have ambition and be as successful as they inspire to be.

The gender discourse matters everywhere in the world and education on these matters is important now more than ever. By educating and raising daughters differently we must also educate and raise our sons differently. By doing this we can begin to dream about and plan for a different world, a fairer world; a world of happier men and happier empowered women who are truer to themselves.

Therefore, to decolonize the negative connotation attached to feminism, we can agree with Chimamanda´s definition of a feminist as ¨A man or a woman who says, yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better. ¨