Book Bearings
The Invention of Women
- 229 pages · about 4 hours
- First published 1997
- 5 editions
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1 About this book
The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures.
Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
- Women, nigeria
- Women, history
- Philosophy
- Nigeria
- Social science
- Discrimination & Race Relations
- Social conditions
- Sex differences
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