Ghanaian renowned writer, Madam Ama Ata Aidoo, has said that most African women have refused to be identified as feminist due to the negative meaning given to the term.
She noted that some African women feel uncomfortable when referred to as feminist because people around would think they are lesbians. Speaking at a seminar to mark the Africa week at the Literature house in Oslo, she stressed that the word feminism is only a developmental ideology.
"Feminism has to do with decision and the impulse to wish for women all that a particular society has for development."
Speaking on the theme "Literature, Feminism and the African Woman Today," she deduced that there seems to be a misunderstanding between African women and those in the western world.
African women often regarded feminism as a stimulus to respond to western ideas of those who live in Europe. However, she said like everywhere, the African woman tries to be independent at all times.
Madam Aidoo said young people in the west from a young age are bombarded with images of Africa and about Africa that are defamatory.
"But don't blame them because if we had developed mentally oriented leadership, things will be different".
According to her, it is not only women who should be feminist but everyone because it is only a theoretical framing of wishing women well.
She mentioned that most of the men in African literature write with understanding to portray women as ordinary human beings that they are.
"It is not only women who are feminists but even men who can write for women to feel that they have been given their due."
Most of Madam Aidoo's writings and stories focus on urbanized women, female characters who are rarely affluent but are neither destitute.
Her female protagonists have often turned their attention instead toward a universal search, each for her own elusive soul and for a female identity that has been seized by an oppressive environment.
She portrays a class of women that is overburdened by the insensitivity of men but is accepting or at least cognizant of specific gender issues that create the cultural environment.
The Women's Manifesto for Ghana is the result of mobilization by some feminists. It is a political document that identifies key national issues of concern to women and calls on policy makers and relevant agencies to address them.
Dr. Dzodzi Tsikata, a women's rights advocate once said there seem to be a commonly observed anxiety over feminism - that it is seen as overtly, if not aggressively political.
She explained that in many countries in Africa, gender activists are accepted as long as they focus on programmes such as credit for women, income generation projects and girls' education, and couch their struggles in terms of welfare or national development.
"Once they broach questions of power relations or injustices, they are accused of being elitist and influenced by foreign ideas that are alien to their culture."
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