We Should All Be Feminists

“We Should All Be Feminists” is an essay by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie is also the author of the novels Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize, and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. “We Should All Be Feminists” is based on Adichie’s December 2012 TED talk. In the essay’s introduction, Adichie states that her aim in delivering the speech was to challenge stereotypical notions of feminism.

Adichie begins the essay by recalling her early experiences of sexism and anti-feminism. She remembers an argument that she had with her childhood friend Okoloma, in which he called her a “feminist”: “It was not a compliment. I could tell by his tone […]” (8). She then remembers later episodes in her life, in which she was warned—often by friends or well-meaning strangers—against being a feminist. Such warnings made it clear to her that the word “feminist” implied an angry, bitter woman: “You hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, you think women should always be in charge […]” (11).

Adichie discusses the injustice of societal expectations for women, both in African culture and in the world at large. She observes that although the world has slightly more women than men, men still hold most positions of power. She posits that the men’s dominance is based on an outdated notion of superior physical strength indicating fitness to lead, and that “[we] have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much” (18). She recalls episodes from her own life—and from the lives of her female friends—that illustrate this point. She remembers how, as a young girl in Nigeria, she was deprived of the opportunity to be her class monitor simply because she was a girl. In addition, she notes that Nigerian taxi drivers and waiters regularly ignore her and treat her as an appendage to her male friends. She tells us that her American female friends have experienced a similar social pressure to be compliant and invisible, even when they hold positions of power: “What struck me […] is how invested they are in being ‘liked’” (23).

Adichie suggests that boys and girls are taught inflexible gender roles, a situation that hurts both sexes equally. Boys are raised to be aggressive and stoic, while girls are raised to please boys and to consider marriage as a central goal. She recalls times when she was warned against appearing too aggressive and outspoken, because she might frighten prospective husbands, and she shares stories of female friends—both married and unmarried—who have had to efface themselves to please men. One single friend, she tells us, sold her house so that she would appear less intimidatingly self-reliant; another married friend grew weary of pretending to enjoy cooking more than she did. Adichie acknowledges that she’s angry over this situation but that her anger doesn’t preclude hope: “Anger has a long history of positive change…I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better” (20). She suggests that in raising children, we focus more on their innate abilities and less on their gender characteristics: “What if we focus on interest instead of gender?” (35).

Adichie acknowledges that the topic of gender makes many people uncomfortable and that they make various arguments to deflect the topic. One such argument is the anthropological argument: that studies of apes show that the female sex is inherently submissive. Adichie refutes this argument by observing that “[we] are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not” (43). Another argument—one that Adichie says her male friends have often made—is that feminists should understand themselves as human beings first and as women second. Adichie points out that this argument erases her own experience of injustice: “[T]here are particular things that have happened to me in the world because I am a woman” (44). In addition, she states that a focus on these injustices is appropriate because women—just as much as her Black male friends—have been historically oppressed. To the argument that women are traditionally submissive in her Nigerian culture, Adichie responds that “culture does not make people. People make culture” (46). She points out that culture is always evolving and that it ultimately exists to serve human beings, rather than the other way around.

At the essay’s end, Adichie returns to the memory of her childhood friend Okoloma calling her a feminist. She provides a dictionary definition of the word “feminist”: that a feminist is simply someone who believes in the equality of the sexes. She affirms that she’s indeed a feminist, according to this definition, and posits that “[m]ore of us should reclaim that word” (47). She tells us that her great grandmother, who never knew the word “feminist,” still fit the description of one, as does her brother Kene, “who is also a kind, good-looking and very masculine young man” (47).