Summary: End (pp. 38–46)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie transitions from her discussion of how we might teach children differently to her own experience of trying to “unlearn” the gender roles she internalized growing up. She relates an experience in which she was new to a teaching job and chose, instead of the feminine clothing she prefers, to wear a more masculine-looking suit. She did this because she wanted to be given more respect and be taken more seriously; she thought that appearing more feminine would undermine her credibility with students.

Upon reflection, Adichie wonders why male clothing is seen as the standard of professional attire. She connects this to the way that many men, like her friend Louis, don’t really notice or consider gender in their everyday decisions about what to wear, the way women do. She says that now, she doesn’t feel apologetic about her femininity.

Adichie then addresses some common objections to her argument. People note that among apes, females defer to males. Her response is straightforward: people are not apes. People say that poor people, not just women, face discrimination. Class, she replies, is a different conversation; the presence of one form of discrimination does not rule out another. (She notes, however, that oppressed people are often blind to the oppression of other groups.) People say that women have “bottom power”—the power they access through men primarily by being sexually desirable. She responds that this isn’t true power; it is just women’s ability to use someone else’s power. More specifically, Adichie notes, people say that women’s subservience to men is part of Nigerian culture. She counters that culture is always changing and that “[c]ulture does not make people; people make culture.” We therefore can—and should—make a culture in which the “full humanity of women” is acknowledged.

Adichie concludes her essay by recalling again her friend Okoloma. She returns to his comment that she is a feminist, and she says he was right: she is a feminist. So, Adichie says, was her great-grandmother, even though she didn’t use the term; so is her brother. A feminist, she states, is any person who sees the problem of gender and wants to solve it. The essay ends with a simple appeal: “All of us, women and men, must do better.”

Analysis: End (pp. 34–46)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wraps up her essay with a call to action—what she wants the audience to believe or do based on the argument she has presented. She transitions into her conclusion by reiterating the idea that change can happen: the norms we are raised with can be unlearned. This is an essential point because it provides a rationale for her call to action. If the existing situation is a problem, and change is possible, then we can take action to make this change.

Then, she deals one by one with several counterarguments having to do with animal behavior, class, “bottom power,” and the cultural basis of gender roles. She refutes each in turn: people are not apes (and thus shouldn’t base their behavior on apes), class discrimination does not make gender discrimination less problematic, borrowing power is not the same as owning it, and, importantly, “[p]eople make culture.” It would be impossible for Adichie to address every imaginable objection to feminist principles, so here she shows that a wide variety of common objections are misguided or unconvincing.

Finally, she returns to the frame story of Okoloma calling her a feminist. In this way, Adichie is able to relate her argument to her own journey of self-education and experience. She shows anyone who is changing their mind about feminism that she, too, has had to relearn and rethink what the term means. Adichie succinctly explains her own definition of what a feminist is before issuing her call to action: be a feminist, “a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender . . . and we must fix it.”