We Should All Be Feminists: Summary & Key Insights

For many people, the word feminism comes loaded with stereotypes. They imagine angry women who hate men or reject femininity. I have often been told, half-jokingly, that I should not call myself a feminist because feminists are unhappy, bitter, or un-African. But I claim the word proudly, because feminism, to me, is simply the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

There was a time when being called a feminist was meant as an insult. I remember being fifteen and a friend telling me, with laughter, that I was a feminist, as if it were a bad thing. I decided then to own the label and define it for myself. Feminism, as I understand it, is not about hating men or rejecting culture. It is about recognizing that something fundamental is wrong when a society rewards one gender and restricts the other based solely on biology.

We need to strip away the anger that others project onto feminism and rediscover its true purpose: justice. I have met women who shy away from the term because they fear alienating men or being seen as unfeminine. And I have met men who believe feminism has no place in their world. But feminism, at its heart, calls for both women and men to be liberated from narrow roles. It invites men to be gentle, to express vulnerability without shame, to see strength not as dominance but as empathy.

To call oneself a feminist, then, is to choose honesty. It is to acknowledge that we live in a world that systematically privileges one half of humanity over the other — and that we all lose when that imbalance persists.

Culture is a powerful force, shaping how we see ourselves and each other. In Nigeria, as in many other parts of the world, culture teaches women to aspire to marriage while teaching men to see marriage as an achievement but not a defining goal. A woman’s worth is measured by how desirable she is to men, while a man’s worth is measured by his success. We tell girls to make themselves small, to cook and clean, to never threaten a man’s ego. We teach them to feel ashamed when they are ambitious.

I have seen this countless times: a young woman graduates top of her class, yet feels pressured to dim her light so she does not intimidate a potential husband. Her brilliance is treated as a problem to be managed rather than a gift to be celebrated. At the same time, we excuse men’s failings by invoking culture — we say “boys will be boys,” as though irresponsibility were built into masculinity.

But culture is human. It is not immutable stone handed down from the heavens. Culture changes because we make it change. The foods we eat, the languages we speak, the rituals we keep — all have evolved over centuries. Why then should gender expectations remain frozen? We can decide, today, to teach both girls and boys to value ambition and kindness equally. We can build a cultural framework that no longer shames men for doing housework or applauds women for silence.

To redefine culture is not to reject it; it is to expand it so that everyone can breathe within it. When we challenge traditional gender roles, we are not erasing our heritage — we are enriching it.