Objectification of Women in Kiswahili and Arabic Proverbs

Abstract

A number of Kiswahili and Arabic proverbs are used as a strategy to objectify women in Swahili and Arab societies. “Objectification of women”, as discussed in this paper, is a notion borrowed from feminist literature, notably Nussbaum (1995) and Langton (2009). While it covers about ten aspects in this literature, the present study looks at only four of them, for which it could easily find illustrate examples from the two languages. The four aspects expound on the following terms used by Nussbaum (for the first three) and Langton (for the last one): instrumentality, denial of autonomy, ownership and silencing. Although silencing is treated as just one aspect here, from this paper it emerges as almost synonymous with the overall concept of objectification, since it underlies virtually all the proverbs illustrated with.