Amara
Enyia
One of the most significant acts against the British Empire was launched in 1929 by a group of women from my father’s village, Oloko in Southeastern Nigeria: The Igbo Women’s War (Ogu Umunwanyi). The war was in opposition to unfair taxation, the exploitation of women’s labor, and British rule, and it exemplifies the role African women have played in understanding that their solidarity with each other enhanced their power as a collective.
To be clear, Igbo women (and African women generally) had ALWAYS had significant, powerful roles in society. In addition to their nurturing roles in the home, African women were critical to the economy playing major roles in the production and agricultural sectors. African women had always been a significant part of the labor pool and most African cultures are based on the premise of balance and harmony. In traditional Igbo culture, women exercised direct political power through organizations like women’s courts, market authorities, secret societies and age-grade institutions. They wielded collective and individual power both as members and as heads of these organizations.
Modern understandings of feminism are focused largely on gender roles and equality. Igbo women had no problem with gender roles or equality. Issues specific to one’s gentalia did not dominate discourse around a woman’s role or power (as an aside, this presents a full analysis for those who are gender non-conforming). Reproductive concerns were, by default, the purview of women.
Power lay, not in one’s genitalia, but on women’s ability to fully fulfill their role as the necessary balance for a harmonious society. Because the collective society was based upon harmony, individual behavior as it relates to relationships (sexual or otherwise) were tightly guided by cultural practices that emphasized the good of the whole and perpetuation of families and lineage.
Solidarity for Igbo women was never symbolic. One of the most powerful proverbs in Igbo language is “Igwe bu Ike” – Unity is strength. When Igbo women stood together to protest some action or activity that displeased them, they operated as a unit. When they stood against the British, they sacrificed their lives for the collective. The way Igbo society was set up, they didn’t have to wonder if 53% of the women in the protest secretly sided with British colonial rule.
Moreover, Igbo societies did not have highly stratified hierarchies. The Igbo are the epitome of ‘democratic’. Power was diffused across small groups or clans that served as checks and balances on each other.
So what happened? Western capitalism, Western religion and Racism, and the creation of racist institutions, as a justifier for exploitation. Capitalism – based on exploiting labor – lead to policies (like the British attempt to tax Igbo women) that harmed and ultimately led to the pillaging and destruction of the African continent. Europeans’ own religious and social norms at that time mainly subjugated women and diminished their role and importance to society.
Through colonization, these norms were introduced, which destroyed the harmonious balance of traditional Igbo society and that of many other African cultures affected by European colonialism (also Arabic/Islamic influence in other parts of the Continent).
In the U.S. and right here in Chicago, we live in an unbalanced society – dominated by warped masculinity and masculine energy without the appropriate counterbalance of feminine energy and power that creates harmony. Rampant greed driven by hypercapitalism and the attempted privatization and commodification of every aspect of the public, has created a Hobbesian society in which wealth gotten through exploitation is worshipped and where power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. There is no democracy – only influence that can be bought and sold.
We live in a city where we prize leaders for being “tough” and “a fighter” even as we lament the fact that our city is deeply divided with equally oppressed groups fighting each other for the crumbs that may fall from the table of the privileged elite. All too often, women in leadership (or those running for office) are afraid to own their feminine characteristics lest they be called ‘weak’. Women are pressured to adopt and prioritize masculine traits thus nullifying the unique characteristics that make women incredibly fit to lead (albeit, perhaps differently). Difference does not diminish value.
There exists a serious imbalance in our city, state and country.
In 1929 Nigeria, it wasn’t until the Igbo women stood up and said “Enough!” that policies by British
colonial rulers were forced to change. It appears that there may be a lesson playing out now in the aftermath of the national election and what’s happening in Chicago and in cities across the country.
Scientific research has shown that there is a direct correlation between babies being held, hugged and spoken to lovingly, and their weight gain and healthy development. I argue that this is the case in our cities and countries. We want to ‘fight’ poverty, ‘fight’ crime, ‘fight’ corruption. We’re doing a lot of fighting but perhaps not enough loving and nurturing. Our challenged neighborhoods evidence this. We must resist economic policies that exploit, public policies that drive toward privatization of public goods, environmental practices that destroy the very earth from which we derive our sustenance, and political practices that give power and influence only to the wealthy.
The need for a change in course is the evidence of the power women wield, the need for women in leadership, and the necessity for us to understand what our role could be in this capitalistic society. It’s not our genitalia that give us power. It’s unapologetically embracing our entire roles as complimentary to men and ESSENTIAL to a properly functioning, harmonious society, starting from our own families, our neighborhoods, our cities, States, and country. Our power and our strength (which have always been the hallmark of African women) lie in our embrace of the fullness of who we are.
If we’re going to solve the significant problems we face, we would do well to recognize the power of love as a baseline, nurturing as the means and a focus on our collective good as the outcome. That doesn’t make us “weak”. It moves us toward a more balanced society where we recognize that we need each other to survive, and to thrive.
Dr. Enyia is a US-based Nigerian lawyer and social justice advocate,
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @AmaraEnyia
