Images of Women in God’s Bits of Wood: The Perspective of Sex Role Stereotype

This paper discusses the image of women in Sembène ‘s God’s Bits of Wood from the feminist standpoint. Sembène Ousmane (1962) posits that women can take up leadership positions in the midst of a male-oriented and dominated society. Sembène defies the stereotype that women cannot be leaders and do not possess organizational capacity through his presentation of female characters such as Penda. The author’s portrait of the revolutionary idea of the prostitute (Penda) as a political activist raises a degraded woman to respectability and dignity, in contrast to Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana, who does not rise above her degradation. Sembène is a resolute advocate of women’s rights and demonstrates that women are legitimate partners in the struggle for social justice. He supports the integration of women in the struggle against the exploitation of the masses. God’s Bits of Wood, therefore, is an artistic work in which the Marxist ideology of equality of people of different social classes coincides with the ideology of women as an entity not subservient to man.