Igbo Gender Roles

The idea of tradition has been passed down for hundreds of years throughout history, along with traditions relating to gender issues. Gender issues in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe relate to American society in a number of ways, especially in the roles of genders. In Igbo society the roles each gender differ significantly, women are expected to be submissive but also valued because of their ability to birth children and men are expected to be providers and masculine. The ways the Igbo society and American society conflict is the roles women have in daily life, the traditions of religion, and also how women are treated compared to their male counterparts. In Achebe’s novel the Igbo society is a male dominated society that values masculinity. Women were essential due to their ability to give birth, and grow a family. Achebe wrote that many men could and did have multiple wives and many children, this is commonplace for these types of traditions. By having a strong

Men in this society had many wives as mentioned before, however women who are not married were seen as unimportant and weak by other women. Afterall married women were highly respected due to the fact that they can bear children, not only this but they also allowed many more privileges than an unmarried woman. In the Igbo society heritance is very important, since it is a society where valuable things are passed down from father to son such as a farm. However, the main character Okonkwo did not have the opportunity to feel what it was like to have something without having to work for it. His father was a very poor man and had nothing to give him, this made Okonkwo a more independent person and decided to make his own farm and grow his own crops. He did this by begging other farmers for yam seeds, he then grew up and decided to give his eldest son his farm, as the tradition would