The Weight of Gender Expectations

Quotes & Notes: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an author and speaker. She has written novels, short stories and non-fiction. She was born in Nigeria, but now divides her time between Nigeria and the United States. There have been translations of her works in over 30 languages. She has been published in several prestigious publications, like The New Yorker. She is a feminist and her book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was written in response to a friend asking how she could raise her daughter to be a feminist.

I had no idea who Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was when I first saw this quote, but the quote speaks for itself. I’m hoping to find a lot of quotes like this one, where I don’t know anything about the person saying the quote and then I can look them up. The discovery will be fun.

The problems with gender abound, not just with like the quote says and the inequality of how each gender is raised, but also in how not everyone is their actual birth gender. I am one of the lucky who knows that their gender is how I was born, for the most part. I am female and 95% of the time, I feel female. I don’t think that I really feel male or non-binary the other 5% of the time. I think I feel the inequality of my gender, that other 5%, but is does cause a sense of disconnect with my gender when it happens. It’s not that I no longer think I’m a woman, but that I’m trying to bring out aspect of myself that aren’t womanly. It makes me wonder if that is how those that are non-binary or transgender feel all the time.

The inequality of gender is painful and not just because men are seen as better than women, but also how males and females are raised…

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