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But also for the African women many social activities were taboo.
Inaccessible to women were the majority of the socio-political business just like the situation of women in Europe. The reasons for such exclusion are irrational. Such marginalization are usually based on superstitious beliefs.
Terms like Stereotypy, clichés, sexism, Stalinism, etc can be used here.
Outside the circle of the oppressed, it is often difficult to feel the cruelty and persecution of women like in any other situation of discrimination and injustice: However just like in every situation of oppression, those who profit from the exploitation and discrimination always do not feel that anything is wrong. They rarely understand the condition of the masses.
Only very few minorities, who have courage and conscience dare reform the unjust situation. In our context, the oppressors are the machos who refuse both the women in developing countries as well as in Europe and America much of their due rights. In addition, European women shot themselves away from their fellow women / sisters coming from the Third World. As a result, this other aggrieved and scandalized sisters withdrew from the Euro-American feminist movement to justify their modified versions of feminism.
Meanwhile, the African-American feminists made the same mistake of exclusion. They looked down on African women. Some of the political turmoils in countries like Liberia stem from the superiority complex of the returnee blacks who now see themselves as half whites and want to lord it over the indigenous blacks who welcomed back from slave trade and offered them abode.This situation has also contributed to the way that both the Euro-American feminism and the African-American Black feminism viewed by black African women, and the women from the Third World. The latter only feel at home in womanism and in other contraptions of home grown women consciousness. Womanism as an ideology portrays the awareness of African women who recognize their interests and needs, and are diplomatically and gender-aware struggling to attain them while not loosing site of their vocation as mother and the welfare of their families (husband and children) and communites.
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model of femininity. The resulting image of femininity in Europe was for the African worldview insufficient and limited. This deficiency led to a search for a new literary typology of the feminine. With this commitment African women writers attempted to show themselves basically and essentially as mothers. The traditional mother role of women is recognizable in many African female symbols. Elvira Godono represents this idea in African Postcolonial Literature in English in the Postcolonial Web which the feminists like Doris Lessing and Catherine Acholonu attempted to support thus:
An Afrocentric feminist theory, therefore, must be anchored on the matrix of motherhood which is central to African metaphysics and has been the basis of the survival and unity of the black race through the ages. Whatever Africa`s role may be in the global perspective, it could never be divorced from her quintessential position as the Mother Continent of humanity, nor is it coincidental that motherhood has remained the central focus of African Art, African Literature (especially women`s writing).
Motherism achieves the same objectives as the womanism, it is a branch of womanist theory. Motherism emphasizes certain aspects of womanism and tries to develop them. The Motherist according to Acholonu is the man or the woman who believes in the survival of the Mother Earth as a unit.
Furthermore, she writes about Motherism:
The weapon of Motherism is love, tolerance, service and mutual cooperation of the sexes ....The motherist writer... is not a sexist. The motherist male writer or artist does not create his work from a patriarchal, masculinist, dominatory perspective. He does not present himself arrogant, all knowing, self-righteous before his muse.
Acholonu (1995) also called writers who express solidarity with the women as Motherists. Authors such as David Diop (1927-1960; Afrique Mon
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Afrique, 1956; see Claudia: The Black New York August 22, 2004) try to understand and glorify Africa as a mother:
Afrique mon Afrique
Afrique des fiers guerriers dans les savanes ancestrales Afrique que me chantait ma grand-mère
Au bord de son fleuve lointain Je ne t‟ ai jamais connue
Mais mon regard est plein de ton sang
Ton beau sang noir à travers les champs répandu Le sang de ta sueur
La sueur de ton travail Le travail de l‟ esclavage L‟ esclavage de tes enfants Afrique dis-moi Afrique
Est-ce donc toi ce dos qui se courbe Et se couche sous le poids de l’humilité Ce dos tremblant à zébrures rouges
Qui dit oui au fouet sur les routes de midi Alors gravement une voix me répondit Fils impétueux cet arbre robuste et jeune Cet arbre là –bas
Splendidement seul au milieu de fleurs blanches et fanées C’est l’Afrique ton Afrique qui repousse
Qui repousse patiemment obstinément Et dont les fruits ont peu à peu
L’amère saveur de la liberté\
The nostalgic representation of African mother is also cited in Camara Laye (1954: 55-61). The mother gives birth to the child and helps it to grow up:
Mother was very kind, very correct. She also had great authority, and kept an eye on everything we did; so that her kindness was never altogether untempered by severity... and my mother was not a very patient woman.
Laye also emphasizes mutual harmonious relationship between his father and his mother:
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My father would never have dreamt of despising anyone, least of all my mother. He had the greatest respect for her and so did our friends and neighbours.
In my opinion it is biologically obvious that the woman cannot be a man and neither can the man become the woman. This idea is underscored by the Motherists. I respect all sexual orientations, and also understand the situation of our brothers and sisters who want to live according to the free development of their personality and self-realization. In addition, in women exists innate values which they need in their role in the family. This includes leadership and ethical values. Feminists, according to Womanists, try to throw these innate ethical values overboard. The idea that the woman is the spiritual basis and last hope of every family, every nation and every community, as it is in Heinrich Böll’s work is ennobling, and this is why I have chosen some of his works for this case study.