What Gender Is Motherhood

Download or read book What Gender is Motherhood? written by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Oyěwùmí extends her path-breaking thesis that in Yorùbá society, construction of gender is a colonial development since the culture exhibited no gender divisions in its original form. Taking seriously indigenous modes and categories of knowledge, she applies her finding of a non-gendered ontology to the social institutions of Ifá, motherhood, marriage, family and naming practices. Oyěwùmí insists that contemporary assertions of male dominance must be understood, in part, as the work of local intellectuals who took marching orders from Euro/American mentors and colleagues. In exposing the depth of the coloniality of power, Oyěwùmí challenges us to look at the worlds we inhabit, anew.