gender & african religion: beyond western conceptions

here is a presentation on the role of gender in african indigenous practices and religion, this is a reflection on what gender is and how it interacts with cultural and spiritual identities

presented for a harvard divinity school course african religions with professor jacob olupona

Reflection

In the assigned readings on gender within the context of African religions, each of the authors explore the importance of gender on the roles within various spiritual practices. The readings discussed the inclusion and exclusion of women, as well as the over-emphasis on the role / power of women in African religions. Yet, it was important to evaluate my personal positioning and understanding of gender to the conversation. As someone who acknowledges, gender as a social construct, it was interesting to consider the ways that these conversations are tainted with a binary view of gender.

Therefore, preparing for the presentation was primarily focused on encouraging a conversation amongst my peers in regards to understanding African religions beyond the Western binaries that have been created surrounding gender. More specifically, gender is a socially and culturally developed conception of roles, behaviors, and identities of girls, boys, women, men, and gender diverse people. Interestingly, roles have been expected of people based on their sex rather than based on their own needs, desires, and interests. Oftentimes, people colloquially interchange the words gender and sex; however, these are two distinct terms. Sex refers to the biological attributes of humans and animals, including physical features, chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy. Western society believes that the biological features of a human should determine their behavior, roles, and identity. Yet, many cultures never adhered to such strict gender binaries like woman and man, but Western ideology tends to universalize their own beliefs as fact, truth, reality, and evidence-based science.

Nonetheless, it is important for people to consider the ways that gender was re-inforced and questioned within their own life experience. For instance, it was affirmed for me that long, loose hair was womanly or “feminine.” I was discouraged by elders from cutting my hair because it was viewed as a woman’s glory; ultimately, an idea that is based on the conception that it is a woman’s role to be beautiful, which was synonymous with long hair of a specific texture. Yet, my family also challenged the normal gender roles. I grew up with very strong women who raised their families together and largely in the absence of father figures. The women in my family owned our own houses, worked full time, and mothered full time. This illustrated to me that a woman could be a provider and a caregiver if called to the task, which is quite different from the normalized gender conceptions of the West.

Interestingly, many languages do not contain gender specific pronouns, as the cultures didn’t use these gendered conceptions to formulate the basis of their society. It is not to say that they didn’t notice sexual difference, but it was codified in the strict binary that is commonly seen in Western cultures. For instance, Yoruba language does not contain gender-specific pronouns because it was generally accepted that women and men could choose to function in various social capacities irrespective of their anatomy.

It is important for my people to know that in many of our ancestral practices, gender was not an organizing principle. Gender primarily gained importance due to Western colonization as their binary has been reinforced into other people’s cultures and thinking. Rather than base community roles on anatomy alone, many African and indigenous cultures used seniority as the primary social organizing mechanism. Westerners assume that ones physical bodies should fully determine and define their social bodies.

It is important that Westerners realize that ones physical body is not a clear indicator of one’s interiority. An individual’s psychic interior is far more vast, unique, and capable of formulating its own social function without the limiting binaries of biological anatomy. In my experience, Black women are living proof of the contradictory ideologies of gender that are promoted by Western religions, cultural norms, and propaganda. African American women or Black women within the U.S. system are often masculinized within their own communities, as many Black women become the primary caregivers of their homes. Institutionally, American professionals have purposefully limited jobs available to Black men while providing Black women with work. This not only places the Black woman at odds with

Western gender roles, but it also places the Black men in contrast to those same roles. Overall, I think it is important that people are liberated from the binary thinking that Western gender norms have opposed, and African and indigenous religions provide proof that societies and cultures have existed and thrived without the gender imaginaries that currently exist.