Gender and Development in Africa and Its Diaspora

Akinloyè Òjó, Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe, Felisters Jepchirchir Kiprono, Akinloyè Òjó, Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe, Felisters Jepchirchir Kiprono

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351119887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book considers how the establishment and/or improvement of gender equality impacts on the social, economic, religious, cultural, environmental and political developments of human societies in Africa and its Diaspora.

An interdisciplinary team of contributors examine the role of gender in development against the background of Africa's convoluted and arduous history of state formation, slavery, colonialism, post-independence, nation-building and poverty. Each chapter highlights and stimulates further discussion on the struggles that many African and African Diaspora societies grapple with in the perplexing issue of gender and development - concentrating on gains that have been made and the challenges yet to be surmounted.

1 Women as sandwiches in the jaws of violence

A study of the impact of crisis on the female gender in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels

Augustine O. Evue

Introduction

The historical, political, and constitutional development of Nigeria shows that gender is a central factor in determining the outlook for the country. In Nigeria, as with most African countries, major issues relating to governance, politics, economics, and religious and family organization are usually male centered. In recent times, Nigeria has witnessed a wave of religious insurgency that has culminated in terrorist attacks on the country by a religious group known as Boko Haram. Boko Haram claims that it is out to exterminate anything that is associated with Western education. The climax of the group’s onslaught on institutions of Western education was the attack on a government-run girls’ secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, where over 200 young girl students were abducted and taken away from their hostel into the terrorists’ den. Prior to the attack on the school in April 2014, the terrorist group had wreaked mayhem on many local communities in the northeast and on the nation’s capital, Abuja, in which scores of people were killed.

Though the bulk of the people who are members of a terrorist group such as Boko Haram are male, the operations of this group and the effects of their dastardly acts very significantly impact the female gender. The reasons for the effects on women are three-pronged: (i) women are usually objects of pleasure, as sex objects and servants in the camp, in the hands of the male perpetrators of violence; (ii) women are factors necessary for the terrorists to achieve success in some instances—the sympathy and favorable disposition which women enjoy in society often make them reliable objects that can be used to deliver an act of terrorism to targets, since women are hardly suspected of criminal acts; (iii) when violence is unleashed on the society, women suffer most. The suffering is usually on three levels: (i) when their male partners are killed, they are left to mourn and bear the burden of sustaining the family; (ii) when their children are killed, they are deprived and traumatized and can hardly live a normal life thereafter; and (iii) when they are killed, the society loses reliable care givers.

Literature is human beings’ emotional response to their sociopolitical, economic, and natural environment. The writers of literary works have the natural urge to communicate to others their feelings about particular events, either to achieve emotional relief or for didactic purposes. In Africa, literature functions as a vehicle for projecting a writer’s experience, vision, or ideas. It is usually a body of creative writing that projects the life of a people evolving within a particular sociopolitical, economic, and cultural milieu. Most importantly, literature performs a historical role: that is, as a means of documenting past and contemporary events which bring about sociopolitical and economic change and social cohesion.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a contemporary Nigerian writer whose literary creativity draws from Nigeria’s historical and political development. Her prose works are stories about Nigeria in the early 1960s, during the 1967–1970 Civil War, under military rule, as well as about economic problems and corruption in government. Just as women are victims in the Boko Haram insurgency in contemporary Nigeria, so it was in the political crisis that engulfed Nigeria during the Civil War of 1967–1970 and the period of military tyranny. This chapter examines some of the impacts of violence on the female gender in the novels written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The two texts used for this study are Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun.

Synopsis of the texts

Half of a Yellow Sun is a recreation of the life of the Igbo and their interactions with their northern neighbours before and during the Nigeria–Biafra war through the eyes of three major characters: Ugwu, who at thirteen leaves his village to become the household servant of Odenigbo; Olanna, the beautiful, educated elite and fiancée of Odenigbo; and Richard, a British writer in love with Nigeria.

Adichie, in this narrative, shows rather than tells the state of affairs before the war through alternating perspectives, preferring to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Through Ugwu’s perspective, the reader is allowed to see life from the perspective of an innocent, uneducated child. Although the story is a Biafran story, this creates an impression of factual reporting. From Olanna’s perspective, the reader can understand the events from an intellectual point of view, while through Richard’s perspective, the novelist attempts to present the story from a disinterested party. Apart from creating ‘objectivity,’ this alternating perspective engenders emotional affinity and allows the reader to live vicariously through the characters. It also allows the reader to see the unique impact of the war on individuals of different socioeconomic status.

In Purple Hibiscus, Adichie tells a story of a family whose patriarch, Eugene, is a successful businessman. In contrast to the character of most businessmen of Nigeria Adichie writes about, this manufacturer and publisher of an outspoken newspaper is a religious zealot and an uncompromising Puritan. The story, narrated through the eyes of the fifteen-year-old daughter of the business mogul, is located in Enugu, southeastern Nigeria, at a time of military rule.

The narrative reveals that this family of four is undergoing a sort of psychological upheaval resulting from the iron grip of the father. The disintegration of the family, incidentally, is paralleled in the country, where the citizens are under the tyrannical rule of the military. Eugene, a wealthy Catholic and philanthropist, stands against oppression and military tyranny even at the risk of his personal safety and fortune. Ironically, the tyrannical grip of the military on the nation is again paralleled within the family, as this devout, harsh Roman Catholic rules his household and family with the same grip as that of the nation’s military rulers. This is manifested in his brutal behavior within his household—he beats his wife, even when she was pregnant, the way a man would beat an erring child; pours boiling water on the bare feet of Jaja and Kambili his children, as a punishment for acting against his wishes; and harasses Jaja for not toeing his line of religious zealotry, to the extent that, at one point, “fear darkened Jaja’s eyes to the colours of tar….” Eugene’s father, Papa-Nnukwu, also shares the near-callous attitude of this religious fanatic. Papa-Nnukwu is a traditionalist, but Eugene refers to him as a “heathen.” Thus, he forbids his children from having too close a contact with the “heathen” lest their Catholic purity is contaminated.

At the other side of the divide is the family of Ifeoma, Eugene’s sister, a widowed university lecturer. Her household is the opposite of Eugene’s—she allows her children relative freedom of expression—and when Kambili and Jaja encounter this world of freedom in one of their visits, their lives are never the same again; it is this new perception of family coexistence that sets the conflict of the story upon which the narrative is built and the plot expanded.

Review of related literature

It appears that the female gender, out of some divine order, was created to always be on the wrong side of history. It started in the Garden of Eden, as recorded in the Bible, where it is stated that it was Eve, a woman, who caused mankind to lose paradise. As recorded in the Good News Bible (Bible Societies, 1979), Chapters 2 and 3, all was well between Adam and God until Eve was created to join Adam in the Garden of Eden. Satan, who had vowed to seek out man wherever God had placed him, found Eve a reliable instrument to carry out his mission of bringing man to eternal damnation.

Since the time Eve succumbed to the subtleties of Satan, the female gender has always been associated with tales of woe. This biblical account on the role of the female gender in bringing a man to damnation and subsequent stories in the Bible about the role of women in the affairs of men have strongly influenced people’s opinions about the female gender up to contemporary times. From time immemorial, the female gender has suffered disparaging treatment. Ann Dobie, in chronicling some of the opinions about the female gender over the ages, states that:

For centuries, Western culture had operated on the assumption that women were inferior creatures. Leading thinkers, from Aristotle to Charles Darwin, reiterated that women were lesser beings, and one does not have to look hard to find comments from writers, theologians, and other public figures that disparage and degrade women. The Greek ecclesiast John Chrysostom (ca.AD 347–407) called women “a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil,” and Ecclesiasticus, a book of the biblical apocrypha, states, “All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.” The Roman theologian Tertullian (ca.AD 160–230) lectured to women that “the judgment of God upon your sex endures even today; and with it inevitably endures your position of criminal at the bar of justice. You are the gateway to the devil.”

(Dobie 2012: 103)

Even the Book of Genesis blames Eve for the loss of paradise. Revered writers of later ages have been equally ungenerous in their descriptions of the nature of women. Alexander Pope (1688–1744) asserted, “Most women have no character at all,” and John Keats (1795–1821) explained, “The opinion I have of the generality of women—who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time—forms barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.” This primordial attitude toward the female gender has continued to prevail in human society up to contemporary time, although mixed with regional, temporal, political, and sociological conditioning.

Writing on the outlook of the African society with regard to gender determinism, Eleniyan (2009) writes:

Our society is one with a dominating patriarchal system with inherent oppressiveness. The oppression is overt but sometimes may be covert with seeming innocuousness. It is male-based authority and power structure that is partly responsible for the inequality, oppression, and fosters the sense of impunity our men displays in their actions.

In Nigeria, the outlook for the female gender has different manifestations due to the sociocultural and religious peculiarities of the northern and southern parts of the country. In northern Nigeria, where Islamic practices are prevalent, the female gender “exists in a situation of less formal education, teenage marriage and confinement to household,” while in the southern part, the female gender has more access to formal education, economic empowerment, and influential positions (World Bank Report, 2013a). Davies, (2012) in “Some Notes on African Feminism,” lists some “traditional inequities which continue to subordinate African women” to include “lack of choice in motherhood and marriage, oppression of barren women, genital mutilation, enforced silence and varieties of other forms of oppression intrinsic to various societies….” All these are primordial or traditional vestiges that have continued to feature in the history, literature, and politics of most African societies in contemporary times.

However, in more recent times, some of the primordial practices and attitudes toward the female gender are becoming relics of a primeval time in Africa and are giving way to innovations, as witnessed in social reconditioning, technological advancement, political reengineering, and global awakenings in the realm of gender equity. Foremost among the global awakening factors are the propagation of feminist ideologies and various global conferences on women and development. The world has witnessed four global conferences on women and development. First was the 1975 International Women’s Year held in Mexico City, which produced the Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and their Contribution to Development and Peace. The Second World Conference on Women was held in Copenhagen in 1980, which affirmed the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Third World Conference on Women was held in Nairobi in 1985, and the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace was held in Beijing in 1995 with the now famous Beijing Declaration on Women. Very recently, Nigeria has begun to move toward the 35% affirmative action for women.

All these efforts are geared toward achieving gender equity and equality for accelerated development. However, despite global efforts to achieve gender equity and development, the female gender still contends with various “forms of oppression intrinsic to various societies,” the most notorious being violence arising from internecine conflicts, ethnic and religious insurgency, political upheavals, militancy, and military tyranny. According to the World Bank’s (2013a) Gender and Development report, the effects of conflict is exacerbating the slow progress of development across the globe, particularly in the less developed nations. According to the report:

Eighty percent of the world’s 20 poorest countries have suffered from major conflict in the past 15 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, conflicts have taken an increasing toll on development prospects, with almost half of all countries, and one in five Africans, directly or indirectly affected by conflict.

While it is generally acknowledged that children and women are most vulnerable in a conflict situation, “men and women are both vulnerable to gender based violence.” According to the World Bank report:

Women are often victims of heightened sexual abuse and trafficking during conflicts, as they are seen as a form of booty by enemy soldiers. Sexual abuse of women from enemy camps is seen as a means of demoralizing the enemy.

This assertion by the World Bank report presents an overview of what has become prevalent in all the countries experiencing conflict across the globe.

Images of women in the throes of violence as depicted in the novels

Violence, conflicts, war, political instability, ethnic and religious insurgency, and their effects on the development of the African continent are some of the major concerns of writers of African literature. The majority of writers have focused particularly on the impacts that the various conflicts have on women. The focus of such works manifests in the writer’s narrative style, diction, characterization, and thematic preoccupation. Adichie falls within the brackets of African writers whose personality and literary creativity exude feministic candor. The two novels under study in this chapter are an exuberant literary excursion into the season of human debasement and descent from rationality to atavistic tendencies during the period of the internecine conflagration and the reign of military tyranny in Nigeria. Adichie has been eulogized for her fearless representation of reality in her novels. The stories related in the novels are replete with images of women in the throes of violence in domestic and national conflicts. Some of these incidents of violence against women, as depicted in the two novels, are highlighted here.

The gang-raping of a bar girl by Biafran soldiers

In an incident from Half of a Yellow Sun, a bar girl was gang-raped by some Biafran soldiers. As the soldiers reveled in the sexual orgy, Ugwu, one of the soldiers, whose turn it was to rape the girl, was not so enthusiastic about the act, but other soldiers taunted him, saying that he was reluctant because he was afraid. However, Ugwu explained his reluctance away, saying “I just like to eat before others, that is all” (Adichie 2007: 365). In a retort, another soldier said, “The food is still fresh!” (Adichie 2007: 365). So, with no choice, Ugwu took his turn in raping this innocent girl, whose bar provides the soldiers with refreshment every evening.

This scene graphically illustrates how women are sandwiches in the jaws of violence. The bar girl is regarded by the soldiers as “food,” a sandwich to be devoured with relish by the soldiers after an operation. Incidentally, this event occurred after the soldiers have forcefully deprived a man of his car while with his wife. The depriving of the couple of their automobile and the subsequent rape of the bar girl show that these soldiers are the jaws of the violence that has engulfed the nation. These jaws have found the bar girl as a sandwich to be devoured to satisfy their physical desire and emotional depravity.

Kainene goes to trade across enemy lines

In another episode, we find that the prevalent suffering imposed by the fratricidal war between Biafra and Nigeria has engendered the humanitarian spirit in the heart of Kainene, such that she goes into the supply of food and shelter for the refugees. However, this humanitarian act turned out to be a channel for her to end up in the jaws of the ensuing violence. Shortly before the war ended, she went to trade across enemy lines, but she never returned. She ended up as a sandwich in the jaws of the fratricidal war.

Olanna bears the psychological scars unleashed on her by the jaws of the war

Olanna, who is described ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: perspectives on gender and development in Africa and its Diaspora
• 1 Women as sandwiches in the jaws of violence: a study of the impact of crisis on the female gender in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels
• 2 Violence against women in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Akachi Adimora-Eziegbo’s Trafficked: an African feminist insight
• 3 Narrating the woes of women in wartime: examples from Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Roses and Bullets and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
• 4 Female circumcision: inexpressiveness and loss in Julie Okoh’s Edewede
• 5 Gender and dramaturgy in Wale Ogunyemi’s Queen Amina of Zazzau
• 6 Sociocultural perception of sexist Yorùbá proverbs and implications for peace and national cohesion
• 7 Àsùnlé cannot be a man: a gendered analysis of Yorùbá Personal Names
• 8 Gender equality, gender inequality, and gender complementary: insights from Igbo traditional culture
• 9 Gender and contesting phenomena (religion, culture, and ethnicity): toward development in Africa and the African Diaspora
• 10 Gender equality: a comparative narrative in African religious, Christian, and Islamic traditions
• 11 Gender equality narratives in African cultural and religious beliefs: contents and discontents
• 12 Islamic law of inheritance: ultimate solution to social inequality against women in Yorùbá land
• 13 Not on this mat: a biographical sketch of marriage, labor, sex, and gender relations in an African history
• 14 Culture and development: indigenous structures, gender, and everyday life in colonial coastal Southern Ghana
• 15 The challenge of gender: marginal participation of women in mathematics in Nigeria
• 16 Rural women farmers and food production in Ekiti–Kwara, Nigeria: motives and challenges of operation
• 17 Female achievement in geography and planning studies at Lagos State University, Nigeria
• 18 The role and status of Kenyan women in sports
• Index