Unmasking Women’s Rivalry in Cameroonian Folktales

Abstract

This paper examines gender role messages conveyed in Cameroonian folktales. Folktales promote women's rivalry and mask men's culpability in oppressing women by setting the stage for their jealousy, enmity and competition. Attention is drawn away from men's wrong doing toward women by depicting women as conniving evil doers who sometimes use men as pawns to implement their plots. The women are deserving of punishment while men go free from any penalty. Dichotomous representations of women encourage women's rivalry and subordination to men. These repeated teachings convey that women are dangerous and that 'good women' embody all those characteristics that exalt and benefit men. Rivalry between women is augmented by men's comparisons between the 'good woman' and 'bad woman.' If women want to survive in a man's world, the message is unambiguous - be a 'good woman' by exemplifying absolute submissiveness and staying removed and disunited from their sisters.