Here is the full transcript of Elma Akob’s talk titled “The Dangers of Western Feminism To African Women” at TEDxUniversityofPretoria 2022 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Is Western Feminism Dangerous to African Women?
Is Western feminism dangerous to African women? As a young woman who was born in West Africa and has lived in South Africa for 13 years, the term “feminism” remains uncharted waters for many. It is rebellious, seen as taboo, and in my home country, Cameroon, it is a word that every mother hopes to never hear her daughter say, because it either means she hates men, men hate her, or she’ll end up not getting married.
But why? What does feminism mean to African women? Is feminism un-African? But most importantly, is feminism dangerous to the safety and empowerment of African women?
Growing up like most girls, I went through the phase of hating boys because, you know, boys have cooties and books before boys because boys bring babies. But my friends thought I took this a little bit further when I decided to call myself a feminist. After watching videos, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We Should All Be Feminists” being at the top of that list, and reading publications from the fierce women who called themselves feminists, I was ready to take on this role as my own.
And so when I stepped into a room, I would introduce myself as Elma Akob, the radical feminist. Whenever there was a conversation pertaining equality, empowerment, and gender roles, everyone knew I would be involved and I would be brutal. In fact, if people saw me approaching and they were having a conversation, they would quickly change the topic because they knew I would call them out on their sexist ways and do so unapologetically.
As a pan-African citizen and a black woman who spat on the face of patriarchy and hated misogyny, I thought I was qualified enough to call myself a radical feminist. But I was wrong. There were certain aspects of radical feminism that I did not align with, such as what seemed to be the innate hate for all things male and masculine.
And so I decided to call myself Elma, the liberal feminist. I was passionate about the liberation of women and what the core definition of feminism was: the equality of sexes, freedom from oppression, and gender equality. Not the extra bits that keep getting added on every single day.
When meeting other feminists, I would always have my feminism questioned as though there was some sort of a checklist or a mold that I needed to fit into to be called a feminist. Then there was the feminist jargon, a series of highly intellectual words that even with my high education, I still find it difficult to keep up with.
I then found out about the racial injustices associated with the founders of feminism, and so I decided to call myself Elma, the intersectional feminist. But then of course, the other feminists always told me, “Look Elma, if you’re not going to be 100% feminist, then don’t be feminist at all.” So I started introducing myself as Elma, the feminist.
The Narrative Faced by Minorities
But at this point, I was told I had watered down the movement so much, and that I was using it for clout. And so now, I am Elma. An individual who is appalled by the injustices faced by women, is an advocate for women empowerment, and understands, or rather stands for, gender equality.
Now why is this story important? Because this is the narrative faced by a number of people who have tried to associate with the feminist movement, feeling ostracized and not welcomed by a movement because they don’t fit into this mold. Especially the minorities, those who don’t understand the language, those who can’t relate to mainstream feminism, those who can’t just take off their bras to make a statement, those like me, we don’t fit this mold.
But were we meant to? Was feminism created with the black woman’s struggle in mind? Was feminism created for African black women?
Now, although black women and white women share commonalities of oppression, the latter have experienced privileges since history. During colonialism, white women, or rather women in general, were characterized according to race, class, and social status. White women were housewives, whereas black women and women of color were colonized.
The creation of the domestic housewife meant the white woman’s withdrawal from a very male-dominated and a male-creative society. She was meant to look pretty and take care of the home, and not participate in anything else such as politics and leadership or getting a job. And thus the foundations of feminism were founded on the principles of a white woman no longer wanting to be a housewife.
The Plight of the Black Woman
She wanted to run for office. She wanted to drive a tractor. But that same femininity that was afforded to white women was completely stripped away from black women.
Black women were seen as aggressive, sexually perverse, and capable of doing any sort of labor, hard labor or soft labor. Note that in comparison to the black woman, the white woman was already superior, emancipated, privileged, liberated, free. Thus all she wanted was the equality of sexes.
Black women, on the other hand, saw empowerment as something completely different. Empowerment to black women meant so much more. It was fighting against racism, fighting neocolonialism, fighting socially economic mechanisms. They were fighting for their life.
And so black African women, the early African feminists, were reluctant to align themselves with this term of Western feminism because they believed that it focused solely on the white woman, making her at the core of this movement, and it ignored the marginalization and the plight of the black woman. Also remember that white women participated in the enslavement of black women. So it makes sense to me that a movement that empowered one race of agenda and oppressed the other race of agenda is not welcomed by everyone.
So my question is, was Africa hopeless before feminism?
I mean, did we completely disregard women’s rights?
Now I remember growing up and hearing the stories about the matriarchs of my village, rather, in Oshie, Cameroon. The women who spoke and thousands listened. Now they were the advisors to chiefs, they led kingdoms alongside their kings, they made a difference, they had influence.
I not only heard of this but saw it for myself when I visited my village and saw the women of the compound, rather, who made the decisions. There, respect was granted according to age, not gender. So the oldest women in the compound, known as “avu,” would be granted the highest level of respect by every man, woman, and child.
Untold Stories of African Women
These were the fierce African women that we had never heard of growing up. And that’s the problem, the fact that these narratives are not documented. And so these women had never heard of the term “feminism.” In fact, feminism doesn’t even exist in our dialect.
But they were happy. And they were living a life that today would be seen as oppressed. And that’s something that I still can’t sit with.
The fact that our grandmothers who are uneducated are currently labeled as oppressed, are currently labeled as enslaved, whereas they were doing their hardest in sacrificing for us to have the basic necessities. Even today we see women who decide to be housewives being looked down upon by the feminist movement as not being strong enough and as settling for less.
So, is feminism un-African? Well, I’ll let you decide that question, but here’s something to think of. Mainstream, or rather, current Western feminist ideology is based on the concept of “I.” How can I free myself from oppression?
African community ideology is based on “we.” How can we empower ourselves for the benefit of everyone? Ubuntu, I am because you are, with strong family values. The problem with feminism is that it is individualistic.
It tries to be representative of an entire gender group. And the truth is, as women, we’re completely different. We differ from our cultures, our traditions, our norms, our histories. Even our oppression is different.
And that’s why you would be able to differentiate between a Nigerian feminist and a South African feminist because of their histories and their cultures and their traditions and what they say is norm. So let’s answer your question. The manner in which feminism is defined with such strict borders that do not accommodate tradition, the fact that African culture is looked down upon as oppressive, and the fact that women who choose to be housewives are seen as less, and most importantly, the fact that cancel culture doesn’t even allow us to have a broad overview on the subject of feminism, I don’t think it is suited for the African narrative.
The Dangers of Cancel Culture
Now, let’s quickly chat about cancel culture, and I’m sure this is something you can relate to because it’s very prevalent in our society today. The fact that someone can say something and be completely cancelled for it, and someone will say the exact same thing and society will say it’s okay.
Unfortunately, feminists have been seen at the forefront of cancel culture. Socially charged guardians of the galaxy who get to decide if we are woke and correct and good or bad, and not even capable of being seen as worthy human beings. Cancel culture associated in the feminist society is violent. It’s dangerous. It weaponizes words.
People are scared. People are afraid to talk, afraid to have opinions, afraid to breathe wrong in case you have the cancel culture vultures breathing at the back of your neck. The problem with cancel culture is that it stops the ability of learning, the ability of educating, and I know what you’re thinking, “Alma, there’s Google, there are resources out there and everyone should be able to educate themselves,” but when you sign up to be an activist, you sign up to educate, you sign up to empower, and you sign up to make a difference.
So it is our role to keep on educating. It is our role because if we do not educate, then progress will not be made in society. Now let’s discuss the dichotomy between feminism as a concept and feminism as it relates to African women.
Last year I remember looking at two articles back to back and the headlines were “The Horrendous Effects of Female Genital Mutilation” and the other was “The German Nudist Culture.” It was at that moment that I realized that what the West saw to be as feminism is not what I saw to be as feminism.
As African women, we are fighting for so much more. We have bigger fish to fry. We’re still fighting the costs of female genital mutilation, the fact that we have children who are being sold off to child marriages, we have sex slaves.
The Fight for African Women
We are fighting a war here. We’re fighting for our lives. We don’t have time for the pleasantries of a nudist culture.
We don’t have time to enjoy the privileges and the perks of feminism. And so I can no longer relate to feminism. I can’t relate to the nudist culture.
I can’t relate to any of that because what we are facing is completely different. Now this does not mean we should wave the white flag. It doesn’t mean we should accept patriarchy as the norm.
Currently in South Africa where I live, we are facing another pandemic known as gender-based violence where a woman is raped every 30 seconds. Now I can’t discredit the victories of the feminist movement thus far. I can’t discredit what the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have done for gender equality, but I think it’s time we re-evaluate the cause.
It’s time we found African solutions to African problems because we are still 50 steps back. We’re not at the level of freedom and equality that the women in the West face and so we cannot adopt their movements as our own. We need to find our own movements.
We must remember that before colonization, before the existence of feminism, we had female matriarchs, fierce leaders who knew what to do, and we can still do that now. I recently heard the term “womanism” as coined by critically acclaimed author of “The Color Purple,” and she stated that feminism did not encompass the beliefs and ideas of black women, but womanism did.
As a social construct, womanism separated itself from feminism. Feminism differentiates from womanism with three different levels of oppression. Feminism focuses solely on the equality of sexes, whereas womanism focuses on racism, sexism, and classism.
So I think we should expand, or rather, research on womanism and see what it means to us as African women as a movement that we can adopt. To end off, I come from a family of five with three girls, a mom, and a dad who wanted nothing but the best for us.
As a doctor and a vice-chancellor, my dad has always said that education is non-negotiable, and it is for that reason that both my mom and my two sisters are currently completing their PhD, and I’m completing my master’s degree at 22 years old. Now, my dad never yearned for a son. At no point did he ever make us feel left for being girls.
The Power of Love
In fact, the way he treated my mom, every single day he would say that he would be nothing without her, and that he is who he is because of her, and he had to work so hard to get such a formidable woman. It’s because of things like that, words like that, that we are the empowered young women that we are today. My dad was never taught feminism.
In fact, I don’t think he’s heard the term except from me, but he was raised in a typical African home where he saw the respect for his mother and the love for his sisters and the love of God, and that was the foundation of who he was and how he raised us. And though I know it sounds cliche, but I think that’s where we should start, at love, because love conquers it all, right? For the longest time, African children have not received love, do not know what it is, and do not know how to show it, and that could be one of the reasons why there is gender inequality.
Love of all passions is the strongest because it works simultaneously with the mind, the heart, and the senses. So, Elma, who are you now? I’m Elma Akob, an individual who is appalled by the injustices faced by women, is an advocate for women empowerment, and believes in gender equality. Thank you.