The Dangers of a Single Story & Gender Equality in Ethiopia
By Halie Schuster
In her Ted Talk, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks discusses the notion that individual identities and the way that people perceive the world are often influenced by the culture that they themselves are surrounded in, with little consideration of other cultures outside of their own which, in turns, impacts one’s assumptions and judgements of others. She beings her Ted Talk by providing examples from her own childhood and upbringing. When she was a young child, she mostly read books from the United States and Britain and assumed that all stories and books featured “white and blue-eyed” foreign characters. As she grew older and discovered African books, she realized that this was not the truth. Additionally, she also learned that these kinds of one-sided truths, or ‘stories’, were not just limited to novels and literature. She goes on to tell the story of Fide, her family’s live-in help who came from a nearby rural village. Adichie’s mother made her very aware that Fide and his family came from poverty but when she went to visit his village, she realized that there was more to Fide and his family than just being poor. His mother had made a beautiful basket and she admitted that it had never occurred to her that the family could actually make things. She explains that “all I had hear about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor” and that “their poverty was my single story of them” (3:36). Adichie goes on to share similar life stories that exposed the fact that creating these single stories shows people as just one thing, and as these are repeated over and over again, they become that singular thing, at least in the minds of others. This prompted her to host her Ted Talk and warn people of the dangers of a single story. She states that “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete - they make one story become the only story” (12:49).
And that, as Adichie points out, is the danger of a single story. As an example, she shares the story of the time that she moved to America and was living with a roommate. That roommate had only heard the single story of Africa, a story marked by misfortune and warranted pity from that roommates towards Adichie. In the single story of Africa that her roommate had grown up knowing, “there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals” (4:41). She goes on to explain that she failed to live up to this idea of “African authenticity” that Americans expected of her. She did not come from poverty, she was well-educated, spoke English as her native language, and lived a life far different from what was portrayed of Africa in the Unites States.
This is all proof of the power of human language. Single stories are a perfect example of the power of word choice and language. The stories that paint a picture in a one-sided and singular light leave a deeply rooted impact on people’s biases and assumptions of the people in the story. Like Adichie says, “How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power” (9:29). Human language, especially single stories, have the ability to rob people of their dignity and empathize how people are different rather than how people are similar. It can divide people and create a sense of close-mindedness that can be very hard to shake. However, “when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise” (18:09).
Despite significant progress that has been made in Ethiopia as a result of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the country still suffers issues regarding gender equality and women’s rights. In fact, the 2010 Global Gender Gap ranked Ethiopia at 121 out of 134 countries in terms of gender disparities (UN Women, 2011). Women and girls in Ethiopia are strongly disadvantaged, so it comes as no surprise that Ethiopian women are valued as mothers and wives but little else. This is especially true of Ethiopian women living in rural areas however, women living in urban areas benefit from greater access to education, employment, and health care. And while most of this urban female workforce comprises of textile production, a few highly education women have been able to find professional employment. An improvement of economic and educational conditions would drastically improve the standard of living for Ethiopian women (US AID, 2020). But in order to make a real improvement in gender equality in Ethiopia, there needs to be a major transformation in the attitudes of men, government officials, and Ethiopian society as a whole regarding women.
References
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (2009, July). The Danger of a Single Story. Ted Talks. Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
UN Women (2011). Ethiopia: Leave No Women Behind. Advancing Gender Equality: Promising
Practices: UN Women. Retrieved from https://www.unwomen.org/mdgf/B/Ethiopia_B.html
US AID (2020, October). Gender Equality and Women Empowerment. US AID. Retrieved from
https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment
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