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Abstract

Patriarchy is one of the crippling limitations that women face in contemporary societies despite the effects of modernism. Patriarchy is a system that thrives on the domination of women and promotes the superiority of men. The system places so many limitations on women to the extent that the subversion of these limitations is considered a violation of social norms and values. This paper discovers that patriarchal limitations have confined unassertive women to be at the whims and caprices of men and their domination. Using deconstructive critical theory, this paper deconstructs Chinweizu’s Anatomy of Female Power which claims that women wield power over men through motherpower, bridepower, and wifepower. This paper concludes that the confinement of female power to the domestic domain is one of the patriarchal strategies to confine and limit some African women to the private space, while the public space is reserved for some men, thereby perpetuating the inferiorization of some women.

Author Biography

Dr. Itang Ede Egbung is a scholar in the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria. The area of research interest is Gender Studies and Feminism in African Literature. he has contributed book chapters and articles to scholarly publications, and presented papers in local and international conferences. He is an author of the book “Gender Complementarity in African Literature”, a critical text, and Wounded, a novel.

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