Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

For Adichie, the problem of gender inequality begins at birth. Yet, it’s not because boys and girls are born unequal—they’re not—it’s because almost from the moment babies are born, they begin to be conditioned into different forms by the people around them.

This is the unspoken premise of the book: The root cause of gender inequality in society is the disparity in the way we raise girls and boys. Unequal conditioning as children leads to unequal outcomes as adults. That puts an incredible onus on parents to engender feminist change.

Many of the suggestions in this book are simply about being aware of the way that we train girls and boys differently so that we can redress the problem. For example, suggestion 7 is about how girls are taught to be preoccupied with marriage, whereas boys are not. Suggestion 8 discusses the way girls are taught to be restrained, mild-mannered, and obedient, while boys are taught to be honest and to express themselves. Suggestion 12 is about the ways in which we condition girls to find sex shameful, while boys are taught to take pride in their sexual conquests.

Again, the problem is not simply that girls and boys are raised to be different.