Akarapon Amnajsongserm

English 12

1205

Sexism Towards Women in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

The superiority of men over women came from one’s culture based on the

environment of human’s survival. In the early age of humankind, humans lived in the nature

without technology and tools to protect themselves from danger. As a consequence, men

became the leaders of their families and clans while women were mothers and family

supporters. This led a society to form the culture based on the belief that men were better

than women in any ways because men were able to provide food and protection for women

and children. They create cultural activities which mostly involve in the role of a man to

show his strength and power. Women are misconstrued as a weak and powerless gender. As a

result, the culture in which men rule over women has led to the sexism and mistreatment. In

Things Fall Apart, it can be seen that a culture has created the unchanged superiority of men

over women.

The existence of gender role affects the culture and the expectation in human society

towards a person’s biological gender. In Igbo society, a man is expected to be a great

husband or man who leads and makes a living for his family while a woman is expected to be

only a supporter for her husband. This can be seen from the speech given by a famous female

Nigerian novelist named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Ted Talk. She says “We teach them

to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian speak, ‘hard man!’ In

secondary school, a boy and a girl, both of them teenagers, both of them with the same

amount of pocket money, would go out and then the boy would be expected always to pay, to

prove his masculinity.” This is to show the prime example of gender role in the modern world

where men must prove his strength and masculinity through actions. They are considered and
expected to be breadwinners since the culture makes men more superior than women. In

Things Fall Apart, it reads “And what made it worse in Okonkwo’s case was that he had to

support his mother and two sisters from his meagre harvest. And supporting his mother also

meant supporting his father. She could not expect to cook and eat while her husband starved.”

(p.22). This implies that Okonkwo whose father has recently died has to take the

responsibility of making a living for his father’s family. In other words, the society expects

and forces Okonkwo to be the breadwinner for the family whose members are all female

except him. The society believes that women cannot live without a man’s leadership and help

and so, the society forces a woman to feed her husband first before she can have her meal

because she is a woman.

Additionally, the discrimination between men and women is highly influenced by the

culture. The treatment of the society towards a man with and without title is somewhat

positive while the treatment towards a woman is highly negative. While a man is greatly

treated and respected by the society, a woman is raised to be only a mother. In Things Fall

Apart, it reads “It was clear from the way the crowd stood or sat that the ceremony was for

men. There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders” (p. 87).

This implies that women have no right to take part in most of the clan’s activities because of

their female gender. Unlike men who still can climb the social rank by earning a title, women

are forbidden to participate any of the clan’s rituals and to be better than a housewife. Even

though some of them are allowed to be involved in a ritual, they still are not told to know the

secret of the clan except titled men. Because these women live in a society where men create

rules and culture to dominate women, they are not given any opportunities to prove

themselves to be equal and worthy to men. If they cannot meet and go beyond the expectation

of the society influenced by the culture where men rule over women, it deems and treats her

as failure, disgrace and a worthless woman. In addition, Chinua Achebe says “His mother and
sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women’s crops, like coco-yams, beans and

cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man’s crop.” (page 22). This is to state that women

are not allowed to grow yams also known as a man’s crop and are only allowed to grow

“easy to take care crops” or women’s crops. In the culture of Igbo, yams are staple diet and

are often used in a celebration, festival and ceremony. This has pointed out that women are

inferior to men since they cannot play a major role in order to support a family.

In conclusion, culture creates the inferiority of women and the dominance of men.

Humans create the culture that allows men to be at the top of the social rank whereas women

are left fractured because men are generally considered to be stronger and wiser than women

and to be strong enough to protect women from harm. The culture creates the role of a gender

that forces a person reach the goal that the society draws for them. A man is expected to be

the breadwinner of his family while a woman is expected to be only a wife. The people in the

society also take side with the superior male gender and believe that some untitled men are

allowed take part in an activity but women are forbidden to know and participate in the

activity. Women are left unattended from the mistreatment of the abusive men and they are

discriminated by the role of female gender. It can still be seen that the belief that men are far

more superior than women negatively affects most of the societies influenced by the culture

of “men”. As a matter of fact, women have the right and freedom to be better than

housewives and should not be thought as weak and powerless since humans now live in the

world where the belief of hard man cannot be applied.

References

Achebe, C. (2017) Things Fall Apart. New York, New York: Penguin Books

Adichie, C. N. [Tedx Talks] (2013, April 12) We should all be feminists | Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie | TEDxEuston.

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc&t=555s