The Ever-Elusive Quality of Womanhood
A conversation started by the book “Tomorrow I Become a Woman” by Aiwanose Odafen
What is a woman? People have been grappling with this question for a long time. They work through the definitions with an anxious look over their shoulder, as if afraid that someone else will get the answer first. Is womanhood biological? Christian? Is it cultural? Maybe it is whatever we have been told it is…
I have such a hard time working through my own understanding of what womanhood is. However, as an African intersectional feminist, I don’t believe in halfhearted responses that define us in opposition to men, as in “women don’t have penises.” What does not having a penis have to do with the fact that I have to wake up at 6 am on the weekend to make breakfast for my father? I also reject responses that are so narrow they are on the verge of cutting you, the definer, out of them.
And yet, as I read Tomorrow I Become a Woman, I was alerted to my reality: that womanhood is still perceived in this diluted way.
“Obianju, you are a woman now” Mama said after she got her period.
“You are a woman now” after Uju got married, awaiting her wedding night.
“Obianuju, my daughter! You’re now a woman,” Papa said after she announced her pregnancy - Aiwanose Odafen
The African picture of a woman is bleak
African fiction authors have painted a portrait of a woman operating under patriarchal heterosexuality since time immemorial, and the picture is bleak. Yet it’s close to my society's understanding of woman. They describe so clearly the weight of expectations gender markers place on women, and when they go a step further to uncover the colonial Western gender ideologies (Like Akwaeke Emezi) they reveal within women a fractured sense of self.
Womanhood is the goalpost we have been told to aim for since birth, but as we get older, we realize that it is not stationary; it races in front of us, only stopping for brief respites and then starting up again.
Thanks to Bill Gates, I exist in many spaces and dimensions. When I touch on some of the definitions, they confuse me. Why is womanhood defined by one’s ability to give birth? Is that not a definition that ends once you are done giving birth or realise that you CAN’T?
There is an ever-elusive quality to a “woman” and it confounds me. Let us explore it.
A wife before anything
A woman is defined as an adult female.
Here immediately sex interferes with gender, which is why we must imagine womanhood sociologically. Oyeronke Oyewumi argues that in the West, a woman is first a wife before she is anything. She grows up learning from her mother that she must cater first to her husband then to her children, and then to whatever family is left; the nuclear family is most important. We can see this ideology so clearly in the constant presence of “high-value woman” content on social media, or in the “tradwife” conversations. Women (mainly cis-hetero) create content surrounding their beauty and “deep” understanding of men in an attempt to encourage other women to cater to men, just as they and their mothers before them.
So, is a woman a person who caters to a man?
Because gender is a construct and sexuality exists on a spectrum, we must already disqualify this factor. But for academic purposes, let's agree. In Tomorrow I Become a Woman by Aiwanose Odafen, Uju is a Nigerian cis-gendered AFAB (assigned female at birth) who caters to her husband from the time they start dating. Her mother tells her to cook stews in his house, both to attract him (best way to a man’s heart and all) and to ward off any other suitors. The students in my city go to their boyfriend’s apartments to cook and clean for them over the weekend for the same reason.
There is so much time taken out of your day and your achievements all to cater to a man who does not reciprocate. Uju’s partner certainly didn’t. Importantly, only when Uju stopped caring for him did he seem to notice she was human. Care work is closely defined with womanhood, almost a prefix for entry, as if care work is ingrained into an AFAB existence. Why must womanhood be defined as a supplement to a man’s comfort? For all her work, Uju is unappreciated, silenced and oppressed in her relationship.
So, is a woman a person whom their partner subjugates?
Uju swallows hardship and her opinions to make her husband more of a man. She learns to take care of the home and wait on him and his friends. Uju suffers so deeply from the weight of her mother’s expectations and as we read we fight the pages because if we can warn her, maybe we can warn ourselves.
When he abuses her, she learns to take it because of her mother’s encouragement. She learns later that her mother suffered the same from her father.
“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.” - Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence
Even though Uju is married, her mother is never far from her brain. She tells her to have children quickly, lest her husband’s family think he “married a man.”
So, is a woman someone who produces children?
Some African feminists like Oyewumi (please read her work) argue this. They say motherhood defines a woman in Africa more than anything else. Women are called “mama” out of respect by people close to them. Once you have a child you are immediately known as “Mama X,” completely relinquishing your identity from before. And the women who do not are pitied or disparaged. Whilst in the West you are Mrs. X, adopting his first and last name in gleeful contentment. Man and wife. But that definition doesn’t work either, because not all women give birth or are heterosexual, even in Tomorrow I Become a Woman (except the het part). But when they do, the child’s sex defines the mother’s status.
So, is a woman a cis-gender heterosexual person who births a boy?
And so on.
These definitions go on and on, becoming narrower until it is smaller than the eye of a needle and through that, no person can pass. How is Uju supposed to be a woman if she has no opinions, no eyes and no fingers to point out his hypocrisy? I wish womanhood was not so closely tied to fickle things like sexuality, gender and womb health.
These definitions that “guide” us are only made to oppress. The exclusion of others depends on single-axis thinking which survives by shielding you from your exploitation under the structures you seek entry into. If your womanhood is dependent on a womb, what happens when that womb no longer provides? Why are you not given protection from the mortality rates of pregnant women? When we think of womanhood without an understanding of the social construction of gender and its performance, we do ourselves a disservice by normalizing our oppression. I say this as someone who only recently internalized that I was not born to cater to men, I was only raised to.
Placing yourself in the sociological realm allows for an understanding of self and how you are becoming within society.
If your womanhood is dependent on sexual organs and the specific oppression you suffered at the hands of the capitalist hellscape we call home, then it is lacking.
I wish womanhood was defined as frolicking in the forest and laughing with friends.
I wish womanhood was defined as frolicking in the forest and laughing with friends.
So, what is a woman?
Everything and nothing.
Maybe I missed something? Let me know. I am an eternal learner.
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