Book "We Should All Be Feminist" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

From a very early age; the Hunter-Gatherers bands (the hunters being the male and the gatherers of fruits, etc. being the female), to date the gender roles are predefined and associated with each gender by society. “Gender roles are sets of culturally defined behaviors such as masculinity and femininity”. As soon as an individual is born he/she is subjected to these gender specifications: girls in pinks and boys in blues. These differences are injected into the children brain’s and this procedure continues and rehappens. In this binary division of gender, man has been predominant, from the word go. Whereas women have been at man’s mercy forever. Being a sufferer, provoked by this dissimilitude Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie felt the need to do something about it and wrote a short book “We Should All be Feminist” adapted from a speech that she gave in a TEDx talk in 2012. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works fight against “The Danger of a Single Story”, how stereotypes confine the thinking of people and create social problems such as gender discrimination. Despite the disapproval that feminism gets, Adichie makes evident that feminism can work for everyone because an acceptance of feminism and the responsibilities that come with it can mean the movement to a fairer world for humans.

The book is a call to action for people worldwide in order to put an end to the stereotypical gender discrimination which has always led to women's oppression. It talks about Adichie’s life experiences which she had because she was a woman and would have never had if she was not one. She had never known about the word ‘feminist’, its meaning, and its cause of existence. The instance when she scored the highest marks in class and was still not ranked as the monitor of the class because she was not a boy, “Then, to my surprise, my teacher said the monitor had to be a boy. She had forgotten to make that clear earlier; she assumed it was obvious”, was a turning point in her life, “I have never forgotten that incident.” She further tells in her book how if a woman in Africa tips someone or pays for her hotel bills it is the man’s money she is spending and that she cannot earn for herself.

When she tipped the person, who helped her park the car, thanked Louis (who is a man) instead, and when she was ignored by the waiter, showed how males are always thought of to be superior to females. She goes on by saying the world has evolved, “But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.” Earlier the physically stronger person was more likely to lead however now the physical strength has been replaced by the need to be creative, qualified, intelligent, and innovative, and these attributes are not just circumscribed to males. From not knowing the term feminist to becoming a “Happy Feminist” then “Happy African Feminist” then “Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men” then “Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss and High Heels for Herself and Not For Men” to finally just a “feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.” is her journey of life and how she embraced the word without being scared of the negative baggage that is attached to it is what this book talks about.

Firstly, the title of the book is very bold and direct. Regardless of the fact that how people respond to the word feminism she is open about supporting it and therefore shows how staunch a feminist she is. In less than 20 pages, Adichie expresses a broad range of issues that are faced by women and society as a whole namely suffocating gender expectations, sexism at the workplace, and normalization. Males and females are raised differently. The girls are taught to cook, do cleaning, do laundry, be polite, be patient, be delicate, and not aggressive. In short, she has to be very girly. There is a term that prevails in all articles “girly girls” lying emphasis on how there is a mold in which the girls need to be molded properly. There are books like “How to Attract Men” that give ladies tips on what men want so that they can transform themselves accordingly, “How to be A Good Wife”, “Super Wife” etc. showing how the roles are set gender accordingly. “All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.” The men are whereas made inhumane and insensitive to girls being treated unequally and their masculinity is defined as “to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability.” The term Macho-Man is very commonly used in movies, articles, magazines to describe a perfect rough and tough man along with other terms like “hard man”, “Tough Guy” and “Mard” in different places worldwide.

Sexism at the workplace is another problem addressed by Adichie. As you move up the hierarchy you will see the law of diminishing variables (women names) being applied. The CEOs of most of the companies in the world are men “(List of World's Most Popular Multi-National Companies and Their CEOs).” Women even if they are equally qualified to men are not considered to be equally intellectual. The research took place on “Male Visual Dominance Continues”, its major finding was that men dominate the front screens on global online newspaper Web sites. The data concluded men were cropped with an emphasis on the head, emphasizing intellect. Women were often cropped with emphasis on the body. The manner in which men and women are depicted in global online newspapers plays a role in how visual images can dictate stereotypes in mass culture.

References

1. Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminist. jackiewhiting.net/AmStudies/Units1415/Texts/We%20Should%20All%20Be%20Feminists%20(Kin%20-%20Chimamanda%20Ngozi%20%20Adichie.pdf.
2. 'Gender Roles.' Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History. . Encyclopedia.com. 27 Feb. 2019 .
3. Luebering, J.E. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11 Sept. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie.
4. Kelly Blake Price-Rankin. “Male Visual Dominance Continues: a Global Study of Images of Men and Women in 750 Online Newspapers in 74 Nations.” School Of Graduate Studies, 2001, dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1101&context=etd.
5. “List of World's Most Popular Multi-National Companies and Their CEOs.” EduScoop, scoop.eduncle.com/top-companies-ceo.