Customer Reviews

The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses

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I read the 2003 edition of the 1997 book. It is about the Europeanization of African gender thought after direct colonialism, taking mostly the Nigerian Yoruba as an example. The author disposes of the Western standards of history, state and philosophy including the supposed African lack of all of that. She analyses the differences of Western feminism and pre- and post-colonial African matriarchies (or what's left of it). African hearing instead of European seeing at the top of the senses and the consequences of that; and mostly genderless Yoruba names. And why there is a sisterarchy between European and African feminists. While critizising the Western gender dichotomy, she is also not so fond of too radical homogenizing of female and male. A fresh light on polygamy will challenge the Western feminist.

She avers homosexuality as a foreign concept to Africa, which clearly is a half-truth at best. The word and literal/direct concept is European, the fact that females and males developed various cultural norms of love, sexuality and sociability among themselves isn't exclusively so. Read for example Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. In that context she fails to elaborate on the preclusion of sexuality when women may "inherit" other wives. Her neglect of this topic, turning it into a taboo, is clearly one of the weaker points of this book. I am also astonished to read vocabulary like "race" in THIS book, as the concept of races is even more European and in fact racist.

Overall, however, this book is recommendable for those interested in the subject. Who may also be interested in Re-Inventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy, Return to the African Mother Principle of Male and Female Equality, When Men Are Women: Manhood Among The Gabra Nomads Of East Africa, and more generally in The Mismeasure of Woman and Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men, Revised Edition.

Oyewumi is right to reexamine not only the Western binary gender categories that many scholars tend to impose indiscrimately on all societies but also to question the whole concept of sex as a universal determinant of social status or role. These categories must be questioned, not because they are necessarily false, but because every assumption must be questioned and replaced with more rigorously examined theory. Thus Oyewumi's discussion of how Western gender categories were applied to Yoruba women and have since been largely adopted as given is convincing and worth reading.

Yet Oyewumi's own "invention" of Yoruba gender identity is even less convincing than the uncritical one she has deconstructed. She relied largely on her own intuition and not on concrete and verifiable facts to show that male/female distinctions were not socially salient in "traditional" Yoruba society ("tradition" itself proving a problematic concept--even if her arguments are accurate, could there have been any time at which what she says was not true? Even though she attempts to escape this trap, pre-colonial "Yoruba society" ends up being a monolithic and timeless society).

A large part of her evidence comes from the Yoruba language, which is not "gendered" like Western languages. For example, pronouns, adjectives, and many terms for social relations, are non-gender specific. This is true of dozens of West African languages (the Atlantic Niger-Congo and Mande languages, for example), even in societies in which serious gender disparities have been visible for hundreds of years. Oyewumi dangerously assumes that language simply mirrors social realities--that language is incapable of concealing oppression, inequalities, or stereotypes. Oyewumi paints a fascinating picture of "traditional" Yoruba society largely from images pulled out of her hat and held up by her authority as an insider ethnographer. For a more credible account of gender ambiguity in Yoruba society, read Lorand Matory's "Sex and the Empire that Is no More."

Oyewunmi goes into an area previously thought to be fully explored, and shatters all the presumptions in an indisputable fashion. The Yoruba 'woman' has been steeped in the image of her Western counterpart by people who never tried hard enough to find out her true roles and social functions in pre-colonial times. This book is written with a great deal of intuitiveness, depth and logic. It is painstakinly researched and thorough, yet imminently readable. It's the best book I've read in years.

THis is an excellent book for anyone who wants to understand the importance and the view of yoruba women. This book is an eye opener for me. It allows me to be able to understand the truth about Yoruba view of arabinrin the anafemale.The book makes me proud of my origin as a omo Yoruda(a yoruba Child).