Some Paradoxes in Yoruba Conception of the Woman

Sophie B. Oluwole recently retired as professor of Philosophy at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She has published on Yoruba oral traditions and on African perspectives on women and development. Prof. Oluwole presently is involved with a NGO called Grassroots Women for Sustainable Development in Africa (GWOSDAD).

Most earliest writers were under the impression that the African woman was regarded as a second rate citizen and a beast of burden in most African societies. Recent discoveries in Yoruba oral tradition do not justify this claim. Sometimes the woman is represented as occupying a higher realm than the man, at other times she is characterized as a whore. The aim of this paper is to investigate the nature and sources of these paradoxical views about womanhood. The goal is to present a consistent picture of what the woman stands for in Yoruba intellectual culture.