Gender Parity, Growing Economies: Refiguring Female Power in Japanese and Yoruba Proverbs

Cultural affirmations and their extensions have been relatively unyielding in their representations of female power and essence. Among the Yoruba people of Nigeria and the majorly ethnically homogenous population of Japan, oral traditions, particularly proverbs, have always provided a contestable site for investigating gender relations as part of an overall template for social structures. Proverbs are critical lenses for the apprehension of cultural epistemes and their knowledge productions. The Yoruba and Japanese are remarked for their strong cultural belief systems which foreground communal acceptability, conformity, ideology and power relations. Japanese proverbs, as well as their Yoruba parallels, are forms of veiled speeches in oral traditions and folklore which communicate society's foundations, formations, religious, cultural and societal idiosyncrasies. This paper, while drawing inspiration from a feminist literary theory and through an analysis of selected Yoruba and Japanese proverbs, contends that within such belief systems are maxims which negate the female essence and shrinks her relevance. While some of the proverbs analysed celebrate women in few instances, they equally unveil the burden of marginalization placed on women. The essay reveals that gender parity as a given for economic growth in a new world order is only achievable when these cultural strictures against women are dismantled.