Many people may never have heard me talk about my mother in this light, so you might need to take a seat because this is a reflective one.
My mother was a member of Women in Nigeria (WIN), one of Nigeria’s pioneering feminist and activist movements, founded in 1982 by women such as Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Ayesha Imam, Bilkisu Yusuf, and others who believed that women’s experiences could not be separated from the social, economic, and political systems around them. But this is not really a story about WIN.
It is a story about the moments I watched my mother try to navigate a system she could see, but could not always name. Growing up in our deeply religious home, I remember her asking questions that made many people uncomfortable. Why, she would ask, did so many rules seem designed specifically for women? Why did religious leaders concern themselves with the size of a woman’s gele? Why were women’s movements, voices, appearances, and ambitions so frequently subject to scrutiny?
At the time, I did not fully understand what she was wrestling with. Today, I think I do. Because what my mother was questioning were not individual rules. She was questioning systems. And systems are often most powerful when they become invisible.
