ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN STUDENT AUTHORS (ANSA)
2022/23 ANSA WORLD CUP
GROUP STAGE MATCH
D2 vs D4 (Text)
You have 10 minutes to produce at least 100 words in response to the following question.
With which gender do you identify - if any at all? Based on your gender, what expectations does society have about the way you should look, talk, dress and behave? What about the way you should express your feelings, the things you should be good at, the activities you should participate in, or the career and life goals you should pursue?
How significant of a role do these gender norms play in your life? Do you feel pressure to conform to them? Or do you feel free to be yourself around your friends family classmates and others?
Your time starts now! Submit on or before 20:30 (GMT+1).
All the best!
ANSA… for the love of writing
INFLUENCE OF GENDER NORMS
I identify as Female. The extent of the distinction of gender roles divers from society to society. In some climates little societal expectation is made on the basis of your gender. Nigeria would be my case study in this piece, given that is my immediate society.
As a Female, society expects us to have ambitions but on a limited basis not like men. Family is expected to override your dress dresses. Female dressing in a large parperspectiveooftry is still restrictedhavets and dress and trousers are frowned on.
Society's pespection on what I am expected to be has not had much of an impact on me as an individual particularly because of an early exposure to a wider climate of people
I am a man, and with manhood has come different forms of responsibilities from society. The world in which I dwell expects man to come first. In Africa, a man should be one who sits at the head. He should be the leader in all scenarios and is expected to be in control no matter where he finds himself. He is to command respect when he speaks, roar, and get the crowd's attention.
He should be adorned in the best of clothes, not just any dresses but the robes of a king. In the 21st century, these kingly garments are called suits, and only when you wear a suit will an African parent see you as the perfect suitor. Hence, when you pursue your dreams, you squeeze them to end up with a white-collar job.
All these came to me as a bittersweet surprise. At first, I had to admit that it was a tough journey, one that consumed my being. I was becoming who I never wanted to be. I wanted to be free - I wanted to break through from the chains of manhood.
Presently, I have realized that it's not a curse after all - I am a man and the pains it brought were what made it manhood after all. It's a blessing to be who I am, and the bleeding stripes of manhood lying on my bare back, only make me love being the man by the way.
It's pleasing to know I'm not just the normal man.
I am the man I want to be!