Gender equality narratives in African cultural and religious beliefs

Abstract

The narratives on gender equality have attracted perspectives that may be accommodated within the prisms of fitting contents and discontents on what African cultural and religious beliefs represent on the issue. The questions to be asked are associated with actually determining what are the contents or the discontents of African culture and religion true positions on gender equality, particularly regarding the role of women and how they are valued in the African society. Some scholars have submitted that the understanding of gender equality within the context of roles based on human anatomy is an importation or transplantation of Western conceptual categories to African culture and not ascribable in origin to African cultural and religious beliefs. Consequently, a close and objective examination of the contents of African cultural and religious beliefs and philosophical and theological thoughts and practices represented, for example, in African mythology, proverbs and prayers, among other features, vividly depict these dynamics.