Treatment Of Women In The Igbo Culture

The accurate treatment of women in the Igbo culture

In some communities, it is debated on how the Igbo women were actually treated and

represented in the culture. Some people think that the women of the Igbo people were treated

like (or even less than) dirt, and others think that they were treated like goddesses, when in

actuality they were somewhere in between. The real treatment of women is represented in the

book "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe with the treatment of the different women, in the

article by R. N. Uchem about the subordination of African women in the 21st century, and the

essay by Christopher Ouma detailing the relationship between the father and his daughter.

In the book "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe the treatment of three main different types of women in the Igbo tribe is shown. The wife's treatment in the book is best represented by the author Chinua Achebe with this quote "And when [Ojiugo] returned, he beat her very heavily." (Achebe 29). The daughters are shone in the book to be treated mostly the same as the sons. Last, but not least, the priests are treated better than any other woman because of their closeness to the gods.

In the article "Daughters of Sentiment" by Christopher Ouma, the relationship of the father and is the daughter is shone with two different stories.

The article describes that the punishments given to the daughters were the same as the punishments for the sons. The daughters were expected to strictly follow the path that the fathers had given them. The innermost views towards the daughters is "...relationships with their daughters reveal a different and complex story of their personalities"(Ouma).

The article "Subordination of Women in 21st century Africa: Cultural Sustainability or a New Slavery? Implications for Educational Development" describes the way that the women

of
modern Africa are treated, viewed, and represented politically in Africa. The author of the article
described the view of women as "Examples are such images of women as inferior, weakling,
subordinate, mediocre, dependent and subsidiary which have lingered into the 21st century,
largely on cultural and religious bases."(Uchem 143). The women of Africa are subjected to
cruel torture if they dare speak out against the law. The women of Africa are shone to be more
likely rejected from most political jobs just because they are women.
In conclusion, most of the women in Africa are subjected to outdated practices and cruel
punishments just for being a woman. This is, sadly, a very common practice in Africa and
continues to be as such.