ABSTRACT
This study is concerned with the manifestation of the protest against gender inequality in the perspective of some selected African authors feminist texts. The research investigates the study through the analysis of the selected text. Some research questions were formulated after careful observation of the problem stated ion chapter one, specifically, the study seeking to effectively determine those factors that could greatly enhance gender equality in our society. In the final chapter, the researcher did a useful summary and made suggestions for further research and recommendation as to how to sustain the solution of the identified gender inequality problem.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Manifestation of the protest against gender inequality examines feminism revolt as a legitimate instrument against gender inequality as it affects women using the following texts and authors as case study. The Wives Revolt, J. P. Clark, So long a letter, Mariama Ba, Second class citizen, Buchi Emecheta, The women of Orena are wiser than the gods, Osadebamwen Oamen and The Dragon Funeral,. Emeka Nwabueze.
The word feminism according to oxford advanced learners dictionary is defined as movement for recognition of claims of women for rights (legal, political, etc) equal to those possessed by men. The concept of feminism is Euro-American. It was established in Africa through the educated African women who felt marginalized within the African cultural society and context as well as having the notion that, in the cultural African society, women like children are seen but not heard and as such has to change their status quo. Aihevba (2006) in his work literacy criticism: A practical approach writes that; “feminism is a revolutionary movements that is focused on specifically the female subject of representing and challenging the mentality that women are subordinate to men. It is a fight against cultural representation of women as domestic and sexual object only good for nothing else”.
The Cambridge Encyclopaedia defines feminism as “a socio-political movement whose objective is equality of right, status and power for men and women” (62). Judith Burdick (2007) in women in transition says “feminism” is an explicitly reduction of the life style created by strong coercive norms that define what women are and can do. She further states that feminism is a psychological revolution based on women’s insistence that they have the basic right to make choice and be judged as individuals.
In conclusion feminism to the researchers understanding is ideologically designed to liberate and emancipate women worldwide from oppression, ignorance and poverty, and that freedom for women is also liberation for me. This means it is meant to correct the impression that women are culturally inferior, whose identity was to be found in the desire to please, serve others and seek definition through being secondary to men, racial minorities, sexual deviants (sexual objects) or even the masses only good for domestic chores and also seen as baby making machine. Being object of male violence, religious fundamentalism and pornography which presented them as literally in bondage to men.
Historically, feminism as a movement has its root or origin in enlightenment campaign against slavery, sexual assault, prejudice and other forms of cultural and literacy oppression suffered by women world over. For instance, in the United States of America, feminist movement was born out of anti-slavery campaign which was subsequently championed by Rosa Park who was against supremacy in America. In the same vein, women in North and South of Europe as a result of prejudice, and privileges denied them also rose to the occasion of feminism. While for the African, it was the educated black women who imported the Euro-American concept of feminism to challenge the institution of slavery and resist white men’s sexual assault. In the view of the above, early feminist who managed to rise above sexual prejudice, their interest was to reconstitute literature in order to do justice to female point of view, concern and value and to identify recurrent and distorting “image of women” or to bring to light and to counter the covert sexual biases written into a literary work.
Consequences, a good literature to them (early feminists) was therefore, a work that is produced to project the freedom and dignity of womanhood and reawakening of feminist consciousness, by appealing to the idea that liberation for women is liberation for men. From the above definitions vis-à-vis conception and the brief history of feminism, it becomes believes that feminism could be socialist, cultural and radical. This essay by the researcher looked at these classification one after the other along line this classification.