We should all be feminists

So I would like to start by telling you
about one of my greatest friends,

Okoloma Maduewesi.

Okoloma lived on my street

and looked after me like a big brother.

If I liked a boy,
I would ask Okoloma's opinion.

Okoloma died in the notorious
Sosoliso plane crash

in Nigeria in December of 2005.

Almost exactly seven years ago.

Okoloma was a person I could argue with,
laugh with and truly talk to.

He was also the first person
to call me a feminist.

I was about fourteen,
we were at his house, arguing.

Both of us bristling
with half bit knowledge

from books that we had read.

I don't remember what this
particular argument was about,

but I remember
that as I argued and argued,

Okoloma looked at me and said,
"You know, you're a feminist."

It was not a compliment.

(Laughter)

I could tell from his tone,

the same tone that you would use
to say something like,

"You're a supporter of terrorism."

(Laughter)

I did not know exactly
what this word "feminist" meant,

and I did not want Okoloma
to know that I did not know.

So I brushed it aside,
and I continued to argue.

And the first thing
I planned to do when I got home

was to look up the word
"feminist" in the dictionary.

Now fast forward to some years later,

I wrote a novel about a man
who among other things beats his wife

and whose story doesn't end very well.

While I was promoting
the novel in Nigeria,

a journalist, a nice, well-meaning man,

told me he wanted to advise me.

And for the Nigerians here,

I'm sure we're all familiar

with how quick our people are
to give unsolicited advice.

He told me that people were saying
that my novel was feminist

and his advice to me --

and he was shaking his head
sadly as he spoke --

was that I should never
call myself a feminist

because feminists
are women who are unhappy

because they cannot find husbands.

(Laughter)

So I decided to call myself
"a happy feminist."

Then an academic, a Nigerian woman told me

that feminism was not our culture

and that feminism wasn't African,

and that I was calling myself a feminist

because I had been corrupted
by "Western books."

Which amused me,

because a lot of my early readings
were decidedly unfeminist.

I think I must have read every single
Mills & Boon romance published

before I was sixteen.

And each time I tried to read those books

called "the feminist classics,"

I'd get bored, and I really
struggled to finish them.

But anyway, since feminism was un-African,

I decided that I would now call myself
"a happy African feminist."

At some point I was a happy African
feminist who does not hate men

and who likes lip gloss

and who wears high heels
for herself but not for men.

(Laughter)

Of course a lot of this
was tongue-in-cheek,

but that word feminist is so heavy
with baggage, negative baggage.

You hate men, you hate bras,

you hate African culture,
that sort of thing.

Now here's a story from my childhood.

When I was in primary school,

my teacher said at the beginning of term
that she would give the class a test

and whoever got the highest score
would be the class monitor.

Now, class monitor was a big deal.

If you were a class monitor,

you got to write down
the names of noisemakers --

(Laughter)

which was having enough power of its own.

But my teacher would also give you
a cane to hold in your hand

while you walk around
and patrol the class for noisemakers.

Now, of course you were not
actually allowed to use the cane.

But it was an exciting prospect
for the nine-year-old me.

I very much wanted
to be the class monitor.

And I got the highest score on the test.

Then, to my surprise, my teacher said
that the monitor had to be a boy.

She had forgotten
to make that clear earlier

because she assumed it was ... obvious.

(Laughter)

A boy had the second highest
score on the test,

and he would be monitor.

Now, what was even more
interesting about this

is that the boy was a sweet, gentle soul

who had no interest
in patrolling the class with the cane,

while I was full of ambition to do so.

But I was female and he was male,

and so he became the class monitor.

And I've never forgotten that incident.

I often make the mistake of thinking

that something that is obvious to me
is just as obvious to everyone else.

Now, take my dear friend Louis

for example.

Louis is a brilliant, progressive man,

and we would have conversations
and he would tell me,

"I don't know what you mean by things
being different or harder for women.

Maybe in the past, but not now."

And I didn't understand how Louis
could not see what seems so self-evident.

Then one evening, in Lagos,
Louis and I went out with friends.

And for people here
who are not familiar with Lagos,

there's that wonderful Lagos' fixture,

the sprinkling of energetic men
who hang around outside establishments

and very dramatically
"help" you park your car.

I was impressed
with the particular theatrics

of the man who found us
a parking spot that evening.

And so as we were leaving,
I decided to leave him a tip.

I opened my bag,

put my hand inside my bag,

brought out my money
that I had earned from doing my work,

and I gave it to the man.

And he, this man who was
very grateful and very happy,

took the money from me,

looked across at Louis

and said, "Thank you, sir!"

(Laughter)

Louis looked at me, surprised,

and asked, "Why is he thanking me?
I didn't give him the money."

Then I saw realization
dawn on Louis' face.

The man believed that whatever money I had

had ultimately come from Louis.

Because Louis is a man.

Men and women are different.

We have different hormones,
we have different sexual organs,

we have different biological abilities.

Women can have babies, men can't.

At least not yet.

(Laughter)

Men have testosterone and are
in general physically stronger than women.

There's slightly more women
than men in the world,

about 52 percent of the world's
population is female.

But most of the positions of power
and prestige are occupied by men.

The late Kenyan Nobel Peace laureate,

Wangari Maathai,

put it simply and well when she said:

"The higher you go,
the fewer women there are."

In the recent US elections we kept hearing
of the Lilly Ledbetter law,

and if we go beyond the nicely
alliterative name of that law,

it was really about a man and a woman

doing the same job,
being equally qualified,

and the man being paid more
because he's a man.

So in the literal way, men rule the world,

and this made sense a thousand years ago

because human beings lived then in a world

in which physical strength was
the most important attribute for survival.

The physically stronger person
was more likely to lead,

and men, in general,
are physically stronger.

Of course there are many exceptions.

(Laughter)

But today we live
in a vastly different world.

The person more likely to lead
is not the physically stronger person;

it is the more creative person,
the more intelligent person,

the more innovative person,

and there are no hormones
for those attributes.

A man is as likely as a woman
to be intelligent,

to be creative, to be innovative.

We have evolved;

but it seems to me that our ideas
of gender had not evolved.

Some weeks ago, I walked into a lobby
of one of the best Nigerian hotels.

I thought about naming the hotel,
but I thought I probably shouldn't.

And a guard at the entrance stopped me
and asked me annoying questions,

because their automatic assumption is

that a Nigerian female walking
into a hotel alone is a sex worker.

And by the way,

why do these hotels
focus on the ostensible supply

rather than the demand for sex workers?

In Lagos I cannot go alone
into many "reputable" bars and clubs.

They just don't let you in
if you're a woman alone,

you have to be accompanied by a man.

Each time I walk into
a Nigerian restaurant with a man,

the waiter greets the man and ignores me.

The waiters are products --

(Laughter)

At this some women
felt like, "Yes! I thought that!"

The waiters are products of a society

that has taught them that men
are more important than women.

And I know that waiters
don't intend any harm.

But it's one thing to know intellectually
and quite another to feel it emotionally.

Each time they ignore me,
I feel invisible.

I feel upset.

I want to tell them
that I am just as human as the man,

that I'm just as worthy of acknowledgment.

These are little things,

but sometimes it's the little things
that sting the most.

And not long ago, I wrote an article

about what it means
to be young and female in Lagos,

and the printers told me,

"It was so angry."

Of course it was angry!

(Laughter)

I am angry.

Gender as it functions today
is a grave injustice.

We should all be angry.

Anger has a long history
of bringing about positive change;

but, in addition to being angry,
I'm also hopeful.

Because I believe deeply
in the ability of human beings

to make and remake
themselves for the better.

Gender matters everywhere in the world,

but I want to focus on Nigeria

and on Africa in general,

because it is where I know,
and because it is where my heart is.

And I would like today to ask

that we begin to dream about
and plan for a different world,

a fairer world,

a world of happier men and happier women
who are truer to themselves.

And this is how to start:

we must raise our daughters differently.

We must also raise our sons differently.

We do a great disservice to boys
on how we raise them;

we stifle the humanity of boys.

We define masculinity
in a very narrow way,

masculinity becomes this hard, small cage

and we put boys inside the cage.

We teach boys to be afraid of fear.

We teach boys to be afraid
of weakness, of vulnerability.

We teach them to mask their true selves,

because they have to be,
in Nigerian speak, "hard man!"

In secondary school, a boy and a girl,
both of them teenagers,

both of them with the same amount
of pocket money, would go out

and then the boy
would be expected always to pay,

to prove his masculinity.

And yet we wonder why boys are more likely
to steal money from their parents.

What if both boys and girls were raised

not to link masculinity with money?

What if the attitude
was not "the boy has to pay"

but rather "whoever has more should pay?"

Now, of course because
of that historical advantage,

it is mostly men who will have more today,

but if we start
raising children differently,

then in fifty years, in a hundred years,

boys will no longer have the pressure
of having to prove this masculinity.

But by far the worst thing we do to males,

by making them feel
that they have to be hard,

is that we leave them
with very fragile egos.

The more "hard man"
the man feels compelled to be,

the weaker his ego is.

And then we do a much greater
disservice to girls

because we raise them
to cater to the fragile egos of men.

We teach girls to shrink themselves,
to make themselves smaller,

we say to girls,

"You can have ambition, but not too much."

(Laughter)

"You should aim to be successful,
but not too successful,

otherwise you would threaten the man."

If you are the breadwinner
in your relationship with a man,

you have to pretend that you're not,

especially in public,

otherwise you will emasculate him.

But what if we question
the premise itself?

Why should a woman's success
be a threat to a man?

What if we decide
to simply dispose of that word,

and I don't think there's an English word
I dislike more than "emasculation."

A Nigerian acquaintance once asked me

if I was worried that men
would be intimidated by me.

I was not worried at all.

In fact, it had not occurred
to me to be worried

because a man who would
be intimidated by me

is exactly the kind of man
I would have no interest in.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

But still I was really struck by this.

Because I'm female,
I'm expected to aspire to marriage;

I'm expected to make my life choices

always keeping in mind
that marriage is the most important.

A marriage can be a good thing;

it can be a source of joy
and love and mutual support.

But why do we teach girls
to aspire to marriage

and we don't teach boys the same?

I know a woman
who decided to sell her house

because she didn't want
to intimidate a man who might marry her.

I know an unmarried woman in Nigeria
who, when she goes to conferences,

wears a wedding ring

because according to her,

she wants the other participants
in the conference to "give her respect."

I know young women
who are under so much pressure

from family, from friends,
even from work to get married,

and they're pushed
to make terrible choices.

A woman at a certain age who is unmarried,

our society teaches her
to see it as a deep, personal failure.

And a man at a certain age
who is unmarried,

we just think he hasn't come around
to making his pick.

(Laughter)

It's easy for us to say,

"Oh, but women can
just say no to all of this."

But the reality is more difficult
and more complex.

We're all social beings.

We internalize ideas
from our socialization.

Even the language we use

in talking about marriage
and relationships illustrates this.

The language of marriage
is often the language of ownership

rather than the language of partnership.

We use the word "respect"

to mean something a woman shows a man

but often not something
a man shows a woman.

Both men and women in Nigeria will say --

this is an expression
I'm very amused by --

"I did it for peace in my marriage."

Now, when men say it,

it is usually about something
that they should not be doing anyway.

(Laughter)

Sometimes they say it to their friends,

it's something to say to their friends
in a kind of fondly exasperated way,

you know, something that ultimately
proves how masculine they are,

how needed, how loved.

"Oh, my wife said
I can't go to the club every night,

so for peace in my marriage,
I do it only on weekends."

(Laughter)

Now, when a woman says,
"I did it for peace in my marriage,"

she's usually talking
about giving up a job,

a dream,

a career.

We teach females that in relationships,

compromise is what women do.

We raise girls to see
each other as competitors --

not for jobs or for accomplishments,
which I think can be a good thing,

but for attention of men.

We teach girls that they
cannot be sexual beings

in the way that boys are.

If we have sons, we don't mind
knowing about our sons' girlfriends.

But our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid.

(Laughter)

But of course when the time is right,

we expect those girls to bring back
the perfect man to be their husbands.

We police girls,
we praise girls for virginity,

but we don't praise boys for virginity,

and it's always made me wonder how exactly
this is supposed to work out because ...

(Laughter)

(Applause)

I mean, the loss of virginity
is usually a process that involves ...

Recently a young woman
was gang raped in a university in Nigeria,

I think some of us know about that.

And the response of many young Nigerians,
both male and female,

was something along the lines of this:

"Yes, rape is wrong.

But what is a girl doing
in a room with four boys?"

Now, if we can forget
the horrible inhumanity of that response,

these Nigerians have been raised
to think of women as inherently guilty,

and they have been raised
to expect so little of men

that the idea of men as savage beings
without any control

is somehow acceptable.

We teach girls shame.

"Close your legs." "Cover yourself."

We make them feel
as though by being born female

they're already guilty of something.

And so, girls grow up to be women

who cannot see they have desire.

They grow up to be women
who silence themselves.

They grow up to be women
who cannot say what they truly think,

and they grow up --

and this is the worst thing
we did to girls --

they grow up to be women
who have turned pretense into an art form.

(Applause)

I know a woman who hates domestic work,

she just hates it,

but she pretends that she likes it,

because she's been taught
that to be "good wife material"

she has to be --
to use that Nigerian word --

very "homely."

And then she got married,

and after a while her husband's family
began to complain that she had changed.

(Laughter)

Actually, she had not changed,

she just got tired of pretending.

The problem with gender,

is that it prescribes how we should be

rather than recognizing how we are.

Now imagine how much happier we would be,

how much freer to be
our true individual selves,

if we didn't have the weight
of gender expectations.

Boys and girls are
undeniably different biologically,

but socialization
exaggerates the differences

and then it becomes
a self-fulfilling process.

Now, take cooking for example.

Today women in general are more likely
to do the housework than men,

the cooking and cleaning.

But why is that?

Is it because women
are born with a cooking gene?

(Laughter)

Or because over years they have been
socialized to see cooking as their role?

Actually, I was going to say that maybe
women are born with a cooking gene,

until I remember that the majority
of the famous cooks in the world,

whom we give the fancy title of "chefs,"

are men.

I used to look up to my grandmother

who was a brilliant, brilliant woman,

and wonder how she would have been

if she had the same opportunities
as men when she was growing up.

Now today, there are
many more opportunities for women

than there were
during my grandmother's time

because of changes in policy,
changes in law,

all of which are very important.

But what matters even more
is our attitude, our mindset,

what we believe
and what we value about gender.

What if in raising children

we focus on ability instead of gender?

What if in raising children
we focus on interest instead of gender?

I know a family
who have a son and a daughter,

both of whom are brilliant at school,

who are wonderful, lovely children.

When the boy is hungry,
the parents say to the girl,

"Go and cook Indomie noodles
for your brother."

(Laughter)

Now, the daughter doesn't
particularly like to cook Indomie noodles,

but she's a girl, and so she has to.

Now, what if the parents,

from the beginning,

taught both the boy and the girl
to cook Indomie?

Cooking, by the way,
is a very useful skill for boys to have.

I've never thought it made sense
to leave such a crucial thing,

the ability to nourish oneself --

(Laughter)

in the hands of others.

(Applause)

I know a woman who has the same degree
and the same job as her husband.

When they get back from work,
she does most of the housework,

which I think is true for many marriages.

But what struck me about them

was that whenever her husband
changed the baby's diaper,

she said "thank you" to him.

Now, what if she saw this
as perfectly normal and natural

that he should, in fact,
care for his child?

(Laughter)

I'm trying to unlearn
many of the lessons of gender

that I internalized when I was growing up.

But I sometimes still feel very vulnerable
in the face of gender expectations.

The first time I taught
a writing class in graduate school,

I was worried.

I wasn't worried
about the material I would teach

because I was well-prepared,

and I was going to teach
what I enjoy teaching.

Instead, I was worried about what to wear.

I wanted to be taken seriously.

I knew that because I was female

I will automatically
have to prove my worth.

And I was worried
that if I looked too feminine,

I would not be taken seriously.

I really wanted to wear
my shiny lip gloss and my girly skirt,

but I decided not to.

Instead, I wore a very serious,

very manly and very ugly suit.

(Laughter)

Because the sad truth is
that when it comes to appearance

we start off with men
as the standard, as the norm.

If a man is getting ready
for a business meeting,

he doesn't worry
about looking too masculine

and therefore not being taken for granted.

If a woman has to get ready
for business meeting,

she has to worry
about looking too feminine

and what it says and whether or not
she will be taken seriously.

I wish I had not worn
that ugly suit that day.

I've actually banished it
from my closet, by the way.

Had I then the confidence
that I have now to be myself,

my students would have benefited
even more from my teaching,

because I would have been more comfortable

and more fully and more truly myself.

I have chosen to no longer
be apologetic for my femaleness

and for my femininity.

(Applause)

And I want to be respected
in all of my femaleness

because I deserve to be.

Gender is not an easy
conversation to have.

For both men and women,

to bring up gender is sometimes
to encounter almost immediate resistance.

I can imagine some people here
are actually thinking,

"Women too do sef."

Some of the men here might be thinking,

"OK, all of this is interesting,

but I don't think like that."

And that is part of the problem.

That many men do not
actively think about gender

or notice gender

is part of the problem of gender.

That many men, say, like my friend Louis,

that everything is fine now.

And that many men do nothing to change it.

If you are a man and you walk
into a restaurant with a woman

and the waiter greets only you,

does it occur to you to ask the waiter,

"Why haven't you greeted her?"

Because gender can be --

(Laughter)

Actually, we may repose
part of a longer version of this talk.

So, because gender can be
a very uncomfortable conversation to have,

there are very easy ways to close it,
to close the conversation.

So some people will bring up
evolutionary biology and apes,

how, you know, female apes
bow down to male apes

and that sort of thing.

But the point is we're not apes.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Apes also live on trees
and have earthworms for breakfast,

and we don't.

Some people will say,
"Well, poor men also have a hard time."

And this is true.

But that is not what this --

(Laughter)

But this is not
what this conversation is about.

Gender and class
are different forms of oppression.

I actually learned quite a bit
about systems of oppression

and how they can be blind to one another

by talking to black men.

I was once talking
to a black man about gender

and he said to me,

"Why do you have to say
'my experience as a woman'?

Why can't it be

'your experience as a human being'?"

Now, this was the same man

who would often talk
about his experience as a black man.

Gender matters.

Men and women
experience the world differently.

Gender colors the way
we experience the world.

But we can change that.

Some people will say,

"Oh, but women have the real power,

bottom power."

And for non-Nigerians,
bottom power is an expression

which I suppose means
something like a woman

who uses her sexuality
to get favors from men.

But bottom power is not power at all.

Bottom power means that a woman

simply has a good root to tap into,
from time to time --

somebody else's power.

And then, of course, we have to wonder

what happens when
that somebody else is in a bad mood,

or sick

or impotent.

(Laughter)

Some people will say that a woman
being subordinate to a man is our culture.

But culture is constantly changing.

I have beautiful twin nieces
who are fifteen and live in Lagos.

If they had been born a hundred years ago

they would have been
taken away and killed.

Because it was our culture,
it was our culture to kill twins.

So what is the point of culture?

I mean there's the decorative,

the dancing ...

but also, culture really is about
preservation and continuity of a people.

In my family,

I am the child who is most interested
in the story of who we are,

in our traditions,

in the knowledge about ancestral lands.

My brothers are not as interested as I am.

But I cannot participate,

I cannot go to umunna meetings,

I cannot have a say.

Because I'm female.

Culture does not make people,

people make culture.

So if it is in fact true --

(Applause)

So if it is in fact true

that the full humanity of women
is not our culture,

then we must make it our culture.

I think very often of my dear friend,
Okoloma Maduewesi.

May he and all the others
who passed away in that Sosoliso crash

continue to rest in peace.

He will always be remembered
by those of us who loved him.

And he was right that day many years ago
when he called me a feminist.

I am a feminist.

And when I looked up the word
in the dictionary that day,

this is what it said:

"Feminist: a person
who believes in the social, political

and economic equality of the sexes."

My great grandmother,
from the stories I've heard,

was a feminist.

She ran away from the house of the man
she did not want to marry

and ended up marrying
the man of her choice.

She refused, she protested, she spoke up

whenever she felt she was being deprived
of access, of land, that sort of thing.

My great grandmother
did not know that word "feminist,"

but it doesn't mean that she wasn't one.

More of us should reclaim that word.

My own definition of feminist is:

"A feminist is a man or a woman

who says --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

A feminist is a man or a woman who says,

"Yes, there's a problem
with gender as it is today,

and we must fix it.

We must do better."

The best feminist I know

is my brother Kene.

He's also a kind,
good-looking, lovely man,

and he's very masculine.

Thank you.

(Applause)