Adichie's Essay 'We Should All Be Feminist'

In her essay, “We Should All Be Feminists” Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie proposes that we should all work together as a society to bring about change to how gender roles are viewed in our society by bringing attention to gender inequality and how feminism impacts both males and females:

“Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colors the way we experience the world. But we can change that.” She writes “And this how we start. We must raise our daughters differently. We must raise our sons differently.”

Adichie is demonstrating that gender inequality is affecting both males and females; she does not seek to castigate men or set one gender against another. Instead, she recognizes that society as a whole

She states “we teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not to successful, otherwise you would threaten the man. If you are the bread winner in your relationship with a man, you have to pretend that you’re not. Especially in public. Otherwise you will emasculate him” This portrays the way women are viewed today in our society. Women are portrayed as being the weak and vulnerable once. But, Adichie does not try to berate or attack males for females sense of inferiority in society instead she exposes that males also face problems because of their gender. She states “we do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a narrow way. Masculinity becomes this hard small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability.” Adichie wants us to know she is neither trying to criticize nor assault men in any way. She is trying to prove her point which is that men and women both face problems in our society because of their gender. Men are always supposed be the strong once, their supposed be afraid of fear not run away. But if a man is afraid and runs away then he is made fun of and called weak. While is a women shows that she has more success than a