GENDER INEQUALITY

ASPECTS OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF THE NKALAHA PEOPLE.

Essay submitted to the Annual Literary Conference in UNIPORT, August 2009.

By

Onyeji Nnaji.

Abstract.

Literature mirrors the society. As a mirror, literature goes far to uncover the aspects of the people’s life which history of various version could not reveal. Various aspects of the unwritten literature of Nkalaha people have different areas of people’s life it bothers on. Some of them hamper effective freedom of some gender in the society. This paper therefore sets out to examine those aspects of gender inequality in Aju-Ede festival in particular.

 To understand why and how African women write what they write, we will have to scrutinize the specific location in which they are situated. But because any specific location is usually circumscribed by gender reality and cultural boundaries, we therefore need to revisit, first, the issue of marginality according to Spivak9; to examine the site where women are silenced because of gender inequality and where they buffet their silence. Marginal discourse about gender inequality often presents the periphery as the opposite of the centre. The periphery rather becomes a monolith or an entity which serves the purpose of the centre and determines the order of the centre.

The tendency to see the margin as a unified position prevents us from seeing the margin as a wide expense of physical, intellectual and psychological space with its own dynamic, contradiction and tensions. In actual sense, the idea of the margin is an immense heterogeneous space created by the boundaries which define the limits of numerous different sizes of reality. The conception of the margin as one of the binary paradigm therefore obscures its extraordinary difficulties. This is because marginality creates space between sexes because of the organs that make them look different. And this space reveals not so much that new imperative could achieve a jump over into the unperceivable position since despair gives this intermediate space an obstructive gap. This essay considers gender inequality created as a result of the reality of the boundary existing amidst the so-called ephemeral and the centre in the unwritten literature of a traditional festival in Nkalaha community.

The conventional way of doing things in this festival esteems the male higher and the female folk mere animals to receive the painful action of the males. This traditional festival creates boundaries of potency between the different genders. Women are generally termed animals. They are hunted like animals in the bush. At a considerable distance, the less fortunate ones among the females are tracked down and inflicted with a painful blow from the male counterparts. Many are stricken as they fell down by the blow from her super-human (man) and are left to cry helplessly, while some are left with sore sustained through the instrument the males use to hunt their prey.

Outside other purposes, the festival is the means through which the community trains hunters who would join the older men hunters in the next years hunting expedition. The festival also offers them the opportunity to train warriors. Each year new set of hunters are trained and initiated into the activity to increase the population of hunters. So, since it is the men only who are trained for the exercise, the female, the weaker sex, takes the remaining part; becoming animals for the male hunters to hunt. The females become objects of completion to make the exercise of the male complete. Women are seen as weaker vessels who could not summon the courage to pursue animals and kill them. They are called anu oriri- “eatable animals”-, they do not need training. They are only good at becoming animals who receive pains from their super-human being (man) to learn brevity and cunning. Women are less superior to be regarded human like their super-human being with extraordinary quality.

During Aju- Ede festival, the females are set in array at the village playground. There they remain, waiting for any prepared male to take advantage of them. The males have wooden gun with which they practice hunting. Every female artiste is brought to the assembly. When the males are ready, the more courageous one among the practicing hunters move forward for a shot. As he fires a shot, he turns back to escape so that the wounded animal (the female artists) does not catch up with him and perhaps, injure him. The female artistes in array at the village playground for maximum exposure to the awareness of the hunter artistes signify the senselessness of some animals that go in-group rather than individually. By such exposure they keep themselves vulnerable, pending the accompanying pain they receive when the hunter artistes arrive.

After the short period of the assembly at the playground each female artists (prey) goes on seeking refuge. All through the days of the festival the females are not given any chance to go out freely because of the male practicing hunters who mount waiting outside for the least freedom they would want to exercise. For fear of the possible action by the male artists some female refuse to come out until when it becomes dark, in the night. Those fearful ones lock themselves inside for a whole day. Many females, through this means, are caged up from coming outside to feel the free air that nature freely brings. For one to come out, she has to look for a child to carry. With the presence of a little child she is exempted from being pursued around by the male artiste. When otherwise the female fellow either stays at home or be prepared to face massive attention from the male counterparts. The least freedom to come outside is still restricted by non-availability of the child to carry. One has to bear a child by her before she could come out freely without any disturbance from the males. In that case, one that has no child around her does not need to be told that her freedom is not in the book of reckoning of the community. She either stays in-door comfortably or breaks her boundary only to be pounced upon like a hungry lion by the male practicing hunters.

Several attempts to escape any gunfire from any nearby artists have caused many to sustain injuries. Many fell down and their parts affected while some, in the attempt to escape, accidentally kick their feet against obscured stones. Until the days of the festival are over, the female artistes (prey) are not allowed an inch to move freely. All their movement is monitored by the men who would want to prey upon them.

All the activities in the festival are very rough and brutal on the female. The atmosphere does not promote freedom for the female gender. Their freedom is here deeply restricted; freedom to movement, freedom of expression and even freedom to the free gift of nature are also restricted because of a festival and because she belongs to the silenced gender. The female artistes are forced by tradition to go bare footed while the males practicing hunting are permitted to put on coverings beneath their feet. The male are asked to appear in full covering of their body because it is stipulated that they might be affected by thorns and weeds. The female artistes are animal’s representatives. Animals do not have any footwear on, so they do not have too.

The weakness of any female artistes turns out to be a golden opportunity for any practicing hunter around. When a female artist falls down, the practicing hunters see it an opportunity to kill an animal. Why would they take pity for her, does one pity for animals? Instead he falls on the animal and kills it. The male, perhaps, might not be blamed; they weren’t the one who made them women. It is rather their womanhood that brings it on them, not the practicing hunters. The audience does not have any positive contribution to render in order to remedy the pain on the helpless animal (female) preyed upon by men simply because of gender differences. What the audience does is to ridicule the female and to scorn her weakness. He ridicules the inability of the female to escape from the male artiste’s gunfire.

However, one may say, by-the-way, it is a tradition. But such person might wish to understand that no cultural festival exists without having any indebtedness to the people’s oral tradition and the belief system it fulfils. Some festival reveals the life style of the people that practice them. These acts by the artistes reveal the position of women in such a given society. Women are seen fitting best to satisfy the hunting curiosity and experience of the men. They are objects created to enable the man learn brevity and cunning behaviours. They are not to be given recognitions or respect. Women are seen, animals that are good to bear pains and injuries while the males go scourge free. It rather shows a society that has less regard for the female folk. If the society has anything upstairs for women, why should the material/instrument that inflicts pain and causes injury be used on them? It should be used on the men rather as the superior being who could bear them.

By the dramatic performance, one understands that the society does not have any regard for women. A society that prefers little children to ordinary female who is not more than a mere animals in the bush. If any female artist (prey) is avoided simply because there is a little child by her, psychologically it means that the little child obscures the female artiste from becoming much more visible. The child, a common child, becomes more important than a full-fledged woman simply because of the organ that differentiates her from her counterpart. Of courses the male becomes a monolith.

Far from research, I believe that the ignorance of the little kids might not out rule gender inequality within them. For if the kids are regarded and respected above the female, male children might possess absolute right to freedom and as well grant more freedom to their bearers, women, than female kids. This shows the ideal African woman caught in the web that tradition and culture provide in the society. Another thing very important is, why must the female be caused to pass through pains and suffer injuries for the males to learn brevity? Women are not conditioned by the nature to teach brevity. To be brave, one has to go on exile. Brave and cunning hunters learn that through their contact with real animal or through confrontation by men of the same gender, not women. Little wonder why some men make their wives their punching bags. Maybe, in the same vein, to learn brevity. One that learns to shoot with a better target does that by shooting at trees, rope or a sampled domestic animal around, not women. Women are created to be adoured, not objects to receive every carefree brutality from men because of their gender. They are equal human beings with men, not animals.

Tradition is tradition, but not all traditions are good to mankind. Some permits individual freedom while many infringes on peoples right to life, especially the females. Some are gender restrictive. Let those that do not permit individual freedom be phased out or be modernized.

Conclusion.

Even the holy Bible permits that any tradition that does not permit human freedom shouldn’t be given heed to, stressing that all man is bought over to freedom with a price. In the same vein, those festivals that create boundary between genders and try to esteem one above the other should also be revisited. For if their ubiquitous condition continuous, the boundaries which define the limits of numerous different sizes of reality is uninterruptedly maintained.

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