Veteran Nollywood actor, Pete Edochie, has blamed feminism for the increase in the domestic violence incidents against married women.
In an interview with BBC Igbo, the thespian said, “Feminism isn’t something black people are known for. Once a woman leaves her parents to meet her husband and takes his surname, she is to be submissive to him.
If she wasn’t married, she can do whatever she wants. Our women now plunge into feminism nowadays. They can’t even keep their husbands anymore. Is that a good thing?
These women are schooled but a lot of wives now can’t even cook — one thing that a woman should be good in so as to be able to keep her husband.
My mother was not educated but she would cook all sorts of soups. My father would always get back home hurriedly to eat what his wife had cooked. Today, our wives can’t even cook anymore.
Women who can’t cook aren’t supposed to call themselves women. And feminism is what causes women to be beaten up in marriages. You complain to a woman and she retorts.
It becomes unbearable, so you stretch your arm and deal her a slap. Domestic violence starts. I don’t like seeing women crying because it hurts me deeply. But it is the fault of the woman herself a lot of times.
To be honest, the understanding of women is low. I’m not a misogynist but I’ve associated with them a lot, even at work. Feminism has no place in our culture. We don’t worship women as the whites do.
I’m a strong adherent of culture. Kneeling to put a ring on a woman’s hands is not our culture. Any man who does that transfers the headship of his family to that woman. Until my dad died at 96, he never knelt to propose.
It’s just like kneeling down on entering a church because there’s a higher being to whom you’re paying respect. Men climb trees to tap palm wine. How does it look if women do the same? Today women dictate to men.
It wasn’t like that in our days. How women talk to men nowadays isn’t how we were raised. My mother was never beaten. My wife and I have been married for 52 years. I never beat her. My five married sons don’t beat their wives.”
