Generally to survive in power in the patriarchy’s hierarchy, you must wield masculine power. Marked by fear, intimidation and even cold blooded mass murder to crush dissent. Isn’t that how it works in the manosphere and in patriarchal societies? Women can’t be themselves in positions of power, they must become men because anything that is not male is antithetical to power in the patriarchy’s hierarchy. I’m not surprised at all. Women must wield an iron fist to prove their masculinity in leadership and moreso in Africa. And nothing is worse than a woman who has become a powerful man. She must prove that she is more ruthless than men. Remember that adage that women must perform twice as hard as men to get to where men are?! Samia is a perfect example.
This my darlings, is why the patriarchy is so dangerous and insidious. It’s worse when it is in the oppressed. Systems of oppression all work the same way. Remember when blacks who were freed took on their own slaves? You’d think that after all the suffering slavery had caused them, they’d have compassion! Not at all. The now wanted to wield the same power their white masters wielded . To become slave owners.
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THE MIRROR OF POWER: WOMEN, PATRIARCHY, AND THE BURDEN OF IMITATION
INTRODUCTION: WHEN MOTHER BECOMES MONARCH
This essay was born out of a conversation with my friend — a sharp, unapologetic Kenyan feminist who left me a 20-minute voice message, voice trembling with both rage and disbelief.
She asked, “Oyinna, are you seeing what’s happening in Tanzania?”
I hadn’t.
Tanzania, in my mind, had always been a quiet country — one of the few places in post-colonial Africa that had somehow avoided the constant turbulence of coups and civil wars. A nation known for calm, not crisis. For order, not oppression.
But now, my friend told me, that calm had curdled.
She spoke of abductions, of activists disappearing, of women reportedly assaulted by security agents, of journalists silenced, and of a government that now looked and sounded like every other authoritarian regime we thought belonged to men.
At the center of it all stood Samia Suluhu Hassan — Tanzania’s first female president, the one who had arrived in 2021 like a balm after Magufuli’s thunder, hailed as “Mama Samia,” the soft-spoken reconciler.
Now she was being whispered about as something else entirely — a matron of continuity, presiding over the same machinery of fear and control she once seemed destined to dismantle.
“Can you believe this? A woman president?” my friend said.
It was unbelievable. The whole thing jolted me.
Not because I believe women are saints — I’ve never been a subscriber to that sentimental nonsense — but because of how easily we accept the myth that femininity and compassion are synonyms. That women, by nature, heal. That empathy sits in the uterus. That once in power, we will all cradle the nation and sing it lullabies.
Reality is far more complicated.
What my friend was describing in Tanzania wasn’t new; it was simply a feminine echo of an old masculine song — power turned violent, rule turned repression. The difference was the voice.
And that contradiction — a woman embodying the same patriarchal cruelty she was expected to cleanse — became the spark for this essay.
We have seen women like Samia Suluhu Hassan in many forms:
The wife who terrorizes her house help.
The stepmother who pours pepper into her daughter’s body in the name of virtue.
The female boss who humiliates her junior to prove she’s not “too soft.”
The queen who inherits her husband’s empire and keeps the empire’s cruelty.
From the home to the palace, from the church pulpit to the presidential dais, there are women who, upon touching power, mirror the very violence they once suffered. It’s a global phenomenon that confuses everyone because it contradicts the myth of maternal mercy.
So this essay is my attempt to trace that contradiction — to ask why so many women, once positioned above others, reenact the very hierarchies that oppressed them.
From Tanzania’s corridors of power to the backrooms of Lagos duplexes; from Indira Gandhi’s iron decade to the anonymous “madams” who traffic other women across borders — we will look at how patriarchy recruits its daughters, how women learn to perform tyranny, and how the feminine mask makes it all appear gentler than it really is.
Because patriarchy doesn’t die when women rise.
Sometimes, it simply changes voice — and pitches it an octave higher.
But she urged me to shed light on this because the media is not carrying it.
And if you feel any compassion for the women who are victims of violence — for the ones silenced, disappeared, or brutalized under regimes that claim to protect them — please, help us share. This concerns all of us.
Because injustice against one woman, in one country, always ripples outward. When leaders get away with oppressing women, that impunity travels. It becomes precedent.
Today it’s Tanzania and Kenya. Tomorrow, it could be Nigeria.
And honestly, look at the United States — the political climate here shows how quickly the rights of women can erode in real time, how power anywhere can infect freedom everywhere.
The global project to keep women barefoot, pregnant, compliant, or conveniently silenced is alive and well — it just wears different costumes depending on the region. Which is why we must keep paying attention, and keep telling the stories of our sisters, wherever they are.
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I. Domestic Thrones: Power in the Miniature
Every home under patriarchy is a small dictatorship, and every dictatorship needs deputies.
The husband is king; the wife his enforcer. The house girl becomes the colony.
We’ve seen this play out so many times it barely shocks us anymore.
The wife who starves her domestic help.
The one who forces a child to sleep outside for breaking a plate.
The “madam” who sends her maid to the market with no food money and calls it training.
The aunt who turns a blind eye as her husband assaults the girl they hired to “help with chores.”
The mother who scalds her daughter with pepper to prove she can still enforce virtue better than sin.
We know these women — some of them are loved in church, feared at home. They cry about patriarchy online but become its human resources department by dawn.
There was Ochanya, a 13-year-old girl from Benue whose aunt’s husband and son assaulted her repeatedly until her body gave up. Her aunt did not protect her. She supervised the silence.
This is the ecosystem of micro-level patriarchy: a woman using borrowed power to oppress another woman, because patriarchy rewards her for keeping the violence in circulation.
And we cannot talk about cruelty without mentioning the madam culture — in trafficking, in brothels, even in offices. Women recruiting, disciplining, and punishing younger women for men’s profit. In every dark economy, patriarchy outsources enforcement to women who have “learned obedience.” It trusts that the wounded will wound efficiently.
“Patriarchy delegates violence to women who can be trusted to perform it gently.”
Even in middle-class homes, the pattern holds.
Mothers teaching daughters shame before empathy.
Stepmothers treating other women’s children as debts to be collected.
Female elders administering widowhood rituals that humiliate the newly bereaved.
A mother pouring mmiri ozu — water used to bathe a corpse — over another woman because grief is never complete without cruelty.
We keep saying women are nurturers, but that’s only true when they’re allowed to own tenderness. Most are trained to weaponize it.
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II. The Glass Cliff and the Burden of Imitation
When women climb into formal leadership — in business, politics, or religion — the same dynamic scales up.
They are not handed opportunity; they are handed crisis.
It’s called the glass cliff: when the system hires a woman only after the men have crashed it.
They bring her in to clean the mess, then blame her when the stain won’t come off.
Men burn down the house; the woman is hired as fire chief. And when the smoke refuses to clear, they call her “incompetent.”
In corporations, she inherits failing departments. In governments, collapsing economies. In marriages, broken men.
She becomes the crisis manager, never the visionary. And the moment she asserts control — the moment she raises her voice, protects herself, or refuses martyrdom — she’s called “arrogant,” “cold,” or “tyrannical.”
The irony is thick: the world gives women only the kinds of power designed to make them fail.
And if they dare to succeed, they must do so by imitating men.
Lower the voice. Straighten the spine. Cut the empathy.
Smile strategically.
Dominate gracefully.
That’s how patriarchy measures competence: how well a woman can disappear into a man’s silhouette.
“If you cannot escape the cage, become the gatekeeper.”
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III. From Kitchen to Cabinet: The Daughters of Patriarchy
Across history, women have risen to power not as revolutionaries but as heirs to patriarchal ruins.
They step into systems designed by men, and the question is never will they rule differently? but will the system allow them to?
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir – The Symbolic Mother
Iceland’s first female president ruled through grace, not guns. Her presidency was mostly ceremonial, yet she transformed the national imagination. She mothered equality into existence — not through policy but through presence.
“She didn’t roar; she rewrote the lullaby.”
Indira Gandhi – The Iron Daughter
Born of Nehru, she carried both his name and his loneliness. She fed a billion, nationalized banks, and birthed Bangladesh — then declared an Emergency and imprisoned dissent. Her rule blurred into authoritarianism.
“She showed that a woman could be the man of the house — even when the house was a nation.”
Benazir Bhutto – The Velvet Martyr
Oxford-polished, grief-carved. Twice elected, twice exiled, finally assassinated. Her sin: daring to be both feminine and powerful in Pakistan.
“They said she was too Western, too proud, too bold — and that was exactly what they killed.”
Isabel Perón – The Caged Widow
She inherited her husband’s throne and his enemies. The generals used her, then removed her.
“They crowned her queen of the storm, then blamed her when it rained.”
Mary McAleese – The Bridge-Builder
She redefined leadership through empathy. No bullets, no coups — just the audacity to believe conversation could heal a country.
“She didn’t conquer her enemies. She invited them to tea.”
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – The Rebuilder
Africa’s first elected female head of state inherited ashes and debts. She mothered Liberia’s recovery, brick by brick, girl by girl.
“She wasn’t there to reign. She was there to rebuild.”
Samia Suluhu Hassan – The Matron of Continuity
Our present case study. Tanzania’s first woman president — soft-spoken, steady, maternal. She arrived in 2021 after John Magufuli’s iron reign, promising calm. She reopened borders, embraced vaccines, and re-engaged the world.
But four years later, she presides over reports of abductions, police brutality, and sexual violence by state agents. The 2025 election delivered a 97 percent victory, and a body count no one dares to confirm.
Mama Samia, once the promise of gentleness, now embodies the continuity of repression.
“Even the softest hands can learn to wield the whip if that’s the only language power understands.”
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IV. Micro to Macro: The Same Engine, Different Scale
What connects the wife who terrorizes her maid to the president who silences protestors is not gender — it’s training.
Both learned that power is proven through control.
Both were rewarded for obedience to the system that victimized them.
Both understand that compassion is punished and domination is respected.
The stepmother pouring pepper into her daughter’s body and the female leader approving police raids are not the same person, but they operate under the same curriculum:
Patriarchy 101 — “Never let them think you are weak.”
And because society mythologizes women as natural nurturers, every act of female cruelty shocks us anew. We gasp, we moralize, we whisper, “But she’s a woman.”
As though the womb came with a warranty for goodness.
“Patriarchy has always known the truth: women make excellent wardens — they understand the prisoners.”
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V. The Redesign of Power
If we want women to lead differently, we must stop handing them men’s blueprints.
Leadership must be re-imagined, not feminized through slogans.
We don’t need more women who act like men; we need systems that allow women to act like humans.
Because power that requires imitation will always reproduce the oppressor, no matter who wears the crown.
We need a model that measures success by healing, not hierarchy — by how many voices are amplified, how many people feel safer, how much compassion survives the budget meeting.
Until then, every woman who rises will stand on the same glass cliff, balancing the impossible — trying to lead without becoming what she escaped.
“They said a woman in power would heal the nation.
They never said the nation would demand she become a man to survive.”
