Abstract
Feminism is entrenched on the assumption that woman is subordinated, disadvantaged, and inferior and as such have become the necessary “other” to man. This dichotomy of the one and the other, Oyeronke Oyewumi argues, is a foreign import to Africa. Consequently, gender is perceived as a Western framework imported into African soil and imposed upon African people. In this chapter, Oyeleye asks: If gender entails the domination of men by women, what then does the domination of women by women entail? This chapter attempts a critical analysis of gender by offering a new conception of gender as the masculinity of dominance and the femininity of subordination. Efunsetan Aniwura, a historical Yoruba figure is used paradigmatically to ground the analysis of this concept. This chapter is grounded on the question: Must gender precede oppression? Oyeleye concludes with a suggestion that, phenomenologically, the reality of oppression must come from a first-person view point.
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Oyeleye, O. (2017). Feminism(s) and Oppression: Rethinking Gender from a Yoruba Perspective. In: Afolayan, A., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59291-0_23
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