By Adaora Onyechere
Here I was quietly glancing through the Harvard business review, going through my vision board and a podcast title slowly slides across my cell phone “Of female power and their feminine wiles”, of course, I could only imagine where the mind of many would have wandered at just the mention of wiles.
The source of this is that in a patriarchal society women are more than often insinuated as objects as it is also in a predominantly sexist society where women are frequently regarded by others as mere bodies, Intriguing and laughable.
The context of Power as it concerns women to the petrification of some ego-thriving alternative gender goes far back into history, defying all odds even the misconstrued ideology of equality and women’s ability.
For almost all of written history, men have held top ruling positions. For a variety of reasons yet there have been exceptions and more than a few women who held great power.
Talking about history and women who were powerful Cleopatra of Egypt comes to the fore, however Long before even Cleopatra reigned over Egypt, another woman held the reins of power, Hatshepsut. We know her mainly through the major temple built in her honor. Over the years it was stated that the influence and tact of Cleopatra were unequaled as she was the last Pharaoh of Egypt and the last of the Ptolemy dynasty of Egyptian rulers.
Even Japan the keen capitalist country (even though to a large extent is more socialist than capitalist) was once ruled by a very important woman perhaps one of the strongest women at the time, yet history even tells that the legendary rulers of Japan, before written history, were said to be empresses, Suiko is the first empress in recorded history to rule Japan and During her reign, Chinese and Korean influence increased.
Several others like Lakshmibai of India born in 1828 and passed on in 1858 became known as the Rani of Jhansi, queen of the Jhansi State of North India. She’s notable for being one of the leaders of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, otherwise known as India’s First War of Independence against British rule. For her role in this rebellion, Lakshmibai became a symbol of fierce resistance for Indian nationalists.
Do we forget Empress Dowager Cixi born in 1835 who passed on in 1908, who during her adolescence was chosen as a concubine of China’s Xianfeng Emperor? As a result, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, who became the Tongzhi Emperor at just five years old. As Empress Dowager, Cixi effectively ruled China for 47 years.
Cixi oversaw the Tongzhi Restoration, which was a series of reforms enabling the regime’s survival. Her empire saw both technological and military advancements, helping it to stay afloat. Additionally, she instigated a complete overhaul of her empire’s corrupt bureaucracy.
Africa needs $484bn to tackle economic impact of Covid-19 – Adesina
The Elegant Queen Elizabeth I
Born Princess Elizabeth; September 7, 1533–March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603, She never married and consciously styled herself as the Virgin Queen, wedded to the nation. Her reign was marked by immense growth for England, especially in world power and cultural influence
The perpetuity of Catherine II of Russia who modernized and westernized Russia promoted education, and expanded Russia’s borders,
The magnificence of The Empress Kandake of Ethiopia, 332 BC, who humiliated ALEXANDER THE GREEK!
Her actual name was said to be Amanirenas. She was blind in one eye due to losing it in a battle with the Romans. She was known to be a fierce, tactical, and uniting leader, a force to reckon with.
The great mother of mankind as I refer to her, Queen Nandi of The Zulu clan, mother of the Great King Shaka. Nandi was the daughter of an Inkosi of eLangeni – Bhebhe, also known as Mdingi of the Mhlongo clan. She was born around 1760, she was one of the greatest single parents who ever lived. When confronted by animosity, rejection, insults, and humiliation, she nevertheless raised her son (Shaka)
Nandi was to also exercise a great deal of influence over affairs of the kingdom during King Shaka’s reign. She, with other women surrounding Shaka, was put in charge of military kraals and given the power to govern while Shaka was on campaign. It is said that Nandi was a force for moderation in Shaka’s life, suggesting various political compromises to him rather than encouraging violent action. Through Nandi’s standing beside Shaka, the kingdom grew by leaps and bounds
It is therefore understandable that King Shaka held women in high esteem because he understood their power and resilience.
One of my favorites of all time QUEEN MOREMI OF ILE-IFE.
During the 12th century in the Yoruba land of Ile Ife, a tribe currently in the western region of Nigeria, there was a queen called Moremi Ajasoro who to this day is considered one of the heroic figures of the Yoruba tribe.
A woman who liberated the Yoruba people was from a neighbouring tribe called the Ìgbò or Ugbos (forest people) even when the Ooni at the time could find no solution.
To this day, the Yoruba people mourn with her and hold her in the highest esteem of many women in the Kingdom.
Queen Moremi has been immortalized in several ways with books about her, public places named after her, and a statue of her erected in 2016 by Oba Ogunwusi in the Ife palace.
The 42 feet statue, popularly known as the “Queen Moremi Statue of Liberty,” is the tallest in Nigeria, and the fourth tallest in Africa, All hail the queen.
Even in the 19th century, the resilient Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan who took charge from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was the first woman to ever head a democratic government in a majority Muslim country.
Bhutto was a big proponent of democracy, and often challenged the social norms that opposed a fair and democratic government. This caused a severe backlash, resulting in a barrage of death threats against her. Still, Bhutto pushed forward to educate people on the ideals and benefits of democracy and the separation of church and state. As a powerful woman in a conservative, male-dominated society, she became an icon for women’s rights.
These models of female and many more reinforce the excellence of women in the noble castes who have contributed immensely to society by daring the oddity of the norm, by referring to queens, heroines, and other great women of the past, this offers models of femininity that contributed to the creation of gallantry among the gender in power.
History has shown the precedence that the power of feminism is in the feminine core of womanhood, the excellence in her ability to become and supersede the curve of social expectation yet preserving the grandiose of her alluring depth and this is no myth or folklore. Yet the discourse on the excellence of women in power has not gone unchallenged, all the exceptional characteristics of these great women as leaders rather than being highlighted was often paralleled by misogynous literature of remote origins right from inception and usually promoted through the stereotypical lean lenses of women’s sexuality.
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex Author, Published 1949, Original title: Le Deuxième Sexe written in French, tries to make an attempt and give insight into this context. Beauvoir’s text provides a brilliant analysis of the situation of women, the social, cultural, historical, and economic conditions that define their existence.
Beauvoir argues that whereas men have assumed the status of the transcendent subject, women have been relegated to the status of the immanent Other. As she puts it in a famous passage from the Introduction to The Second Sex: “She is defined and differentiated regarding man and not he regarding her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other” (Beauvoir, xxii).
This distinction between man as Subject and woman as Other therefore even though we agree on the form but the norm that women irrespective of these uncharted definitions are of excellence even as chargé d’affaires.
This discourse on the excellence of women and the misogynous discourse have competed with one another in an almost ritualised performance by laying down the ambiguous narrative that feminism is radically different from the “discourse on the excellence of women” and rather is a line of political thought that is typical of the enlightenment in the context of the development of modern political philosophy.
Yet again as pervasive as the thought of form and been of feminism is for the patriarchal social sect, feminism has emerged as the most important and profound correction to primitive democratism which exists in our time.
It is a discourse on the excellence of womanhood one based on the notion of equality, capacity, and ability, Feminism unlike its classification by various schools of thought is for me the vindication of the rights of women all over the world.
What is a queen without Her King you may ask perhaps it’s best to ask women like Queen Amina of Zazzau, Queen Shammuramat of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, and many other countless queens who turned mere kingdoms into the greatest empires.
