By Lawal Adeyemi

The African writer has a special mission, given that the African social context is marked by glaring gender inequalities, exploitation, and ageless barbaric oppression of the so-called weaker sex. More than her male-counterpart, she must document fully the African women’s condition. Injustices are still evident, segregation continues, despite the ten-year plan for women’s development declared by the United Nations, in spite of grandiose and laudable intentions. Discriminations are still abundant inside families and institutions, on the street, in the work place, in political assemblies” – Mariama Ba

The purpose of this piece of writing is to provide responses to the topic of why women authors in Africa are required. Due to the way women are portrayed in African society, it has created a gap. The sexist whims and caprices of their male counterparts have been discovered by women. That is to say, they have been rejected, shunned, subordinated, othered and regarded as both complementing and inferior aspects of society. It is of note, male writers such as: Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, J.P Clark, Tanure Ojaide to mention few have incorporated women in their literary works as being inferior. However, in literary texts they play roles such as: promiscuous beings, domesticated tools, and house-helps, etc. In other words, they portray them as destructive, vicious, gullible and unhelpful beings. These attributes and lifestyles assigned to the women in texts as conceived by men are unrealistic. For instance, in Achebe’s Things Fall
Apart, the protagonist Okonkwo is seen toughly dealing with his wives like slaves. He beats them, shouts at them as well as relegates them to their background. Also, in Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel, Sidi is designed to be beautiful but becomes clumsy and foolish when she falls into the wrong hand, Baroka. Baroka’s first wife becomes a fool by wooing Sidi for her supposedly husband. William Shakespeare whose literary works served as grand narratives for African writers posited that, ‘women have a seething brain’.
First, it is highly catastrophic and blackmailing for men to have portrayed women as being irrational and lowly born. As it is necessary for Achebe to have given a breath-taking reply to the provocative piece of Joyce Cary’s Mr Johnson, so, it is necessary for women to ferociously and critically give a deserved reply to writings of their male-counterparts. A renowned female author Flora Nwapa saw her writing to be an intervention in an African literary tradition where women were frequently seen from a male-centric angle. She viewed her writings as an effort to reframe the way we think about African womanhood beyond the victimisation paradigm. She had become weary of how male authors reduced African women to little more than poor traders, prostitutes, and sad wives in their novels. With her multidimensional and complicated figures, she aims to reimagine African womanhood.
Next, the mirror of reality is literature. In other words, everything in this universe is being played out as a fictitious representation by individual at play. If males are the only ones permitted to write about women as they already do, their writings will be emotional and skewed towards their own masculinist behavioural philosophy. For instance, only terror can explain what terrorism means and how it works. This implies that a person, rather than having their thoughts articulated by someone else, may best explain themselves. Perhaps today’s challenges for women are a result of males painting incorrect and inaccurate views of women. Remarkably, even Jesus, as depicted in the Bible, portrays women as awkward, nymph-like beings whose existence are marked by atrocities.
Moving on, women have contact with all individuals in the society. In the reposition of Africa, Africa is to take up its rightful place globally, putting down the experience of the women becomes inevitable. These writings by them provide readers with ideas and perception of women towards African society, the issues as well as proffering solution. So that their views could be heard too, particularly when religions have suppressed and marginalised them. They needed an avenue to air their views. In order for them to speak for other women who go through battery, abuse, sex slavery, trafficking, etc. curbing the excesses and correcting the daunting anomalies of fellow women in the society were important.
In addition, the positive influences of women were neglected. Women tend to have contributed immensely to the growth of African society, in applauding them reverse is the case. But all credits are given to Sango, Obatala and so on. Women like Moremi, mother Osun segense and some notable goddesses have contributed wholeheartedly to their respective society. These heroines had laid their lives as sacrifices for their respective societies.
Issues raised in the paragraphs above led to the call of women writers in Africa to write back as a revolt to the oppression, depression, subjugation, marginalisation, brutalisation, ostracisation, circumcision and discrimination of women writers in the African society. Women presented themselves not to be perpetuators but rather creators. Their literary works endeavour to create a freer culture and challenges the deep-minded and patriarchal ethics of their respective societies. Despite being marginalised by the male folks, African women novelists’ writings are numerous, inventively heterogeneous and insightful. Works of women writers who emerged forty-years thereabouts are authors such as: Mariama Ba (Senegal), Flora Nwapa (Nigeria), Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), Tsitsi Dangaremga (Zimbabwe), Leila Aboulela (Sudan), etc. There is a clear and robust attempt to complicate or subvert the tradition of male writing in which female characters are often relegated to the margins of the culture, and confined to the domestic private sphere.
In conclusion, owing to the themes in female African writing, the prominent of them all is abandonment and desertion. The works of Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Double Yoke (1982), Flora Nwapa’s One is Enough (1981) and Efuru (1966), and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (1974). In these works, women are abandoned either by their husbands, fathers or sons. Also, these works show how societal inequities, the gravity of some sexist traditions, and ego, abusive perceptions of religion ultimately lead to tragedies in women’s lives. Women were able to take complete control of their life and overturn organisations that were so harmful to them because of how males had portrayed them. They no longer endure the false pictures men writers painted them to be. The women writers of today are questioning those institutions and traditions which have become the cause of women’s rejection and marginalisation in the society.