Proverbs as Ideological Weapon for Relegating Women: The Case of East Gojam

Abstract

Because of the long-lived traditional patriarchal ideology, women in many countries particularly in developing ones like Ethiopia have been relegated in to the margins of society, culture, and history in male-dominated environment. Women have been marginalized in the socio-cultural, economic and political spheres. As part of the world, women in East Gojam are naturally considered inferior to men. Hence, the primary aim of this study was to examine how proverbs function as ideological weapon for relegating women in east Gojam. Interview, focus group discussion and document analysis were used as instruments to gather proverbs from informants obtained through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The ethnographic design or interpretative approach was used to conduct this study. The result revealed that proverbs in east Gojam are used to relegate women drawing different negative images. Such images include women as hussy beings, unreliable and unpredictable, infirm, captious, deserving ill-treatments, source of danger and problems.