Gender
Society & Culture
The Marriage Spectacle and the Defense It Teaches
A meditation on how public discourse around high-profile marital collapse—specifically the Edoho case—transmits destructive defensive postures to younger people forming their own views of partnership. The piece argues that the spectacle teaches both men and women to enter marriage as strategic positioning rather than mutual construction.
Typecasting and the Impoverishment of Cameroonian Cinema
Typecasting—the practice of repeatedly casting actors in similar roles—constrains both individual talent and the film industry's creative range. The essay argues that this limitation is particularly acute in Cameroon, where a thin market for scripts and a consolidation of producer-actors narrows the stories told and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
On Women's Complicity: A Call to Reckoning
The writer argues that women bear significant responsibility for their own social circumstances, not only men, pointing to how mothers have historically enforced violence, silenced victims, and perpetuated cycles of harm within families. The piece calls for women to move beyond victimhood narratives, acknowledge their agency in these systems, and rebuild through self-reflection, integrity, and mutual support.
A Letter to Cameroonian and African Men
A young woman confronts the contradiction between the idealized image of the African man as protector and the reality of contemporary masculinity she observes—one that reduces women to wife-material categories, demands their submission, and offers no reciprocal regard for their wellbeing or autonomy.
Women and the Evolutionary World: On Progress, Recognition, and Future Leadership
A celebratory essay tracing women's gradual emergence from domestic confinement into visible leadership across politics, arts, and music. The writer argues that recognizing women's historical exclusion and current contributions is essential to building a sustainable future.
Multi-Dating as Honest Negotiation: Rethinking Modern Romance
The writer proposes open multi-dating—simultaneously dating multiple partners with full consent and transparency—as a corrective to the serial heartbreak, infidelity, and deception that characterizes many modern relationships. Rather than a justification for promiscuity, the argument frames it as a deliberate audition process for finding genuine compatibility, grounded in radical honesty about intentions and desires.
The Silhouette Challenge and the Right to Define One's Own Sexuality
A rebuttal to Poise's earlier critique of the silhouette challenge, arguing that the practice represents women's assertion of sexual autonomy and freedom from historically imposed shame and control, rather than a lapse in judgment requiring male protection.
The Silhouette Challenge and the Rhetoric of Empowerment
A critical examination of the viral Silhouette Challenge, questioning the gap between claims of empowerment and the actual motivations—and risks—of sharing intimate content online. The writer argues that attributing participation to feminism or body autonomy obscures what he sees as vanity-driven behavior and a failure of personal responsibility.
The Dress Code Debate: Beyond Marketplace Arguments About Rape Prevention
The writer interrogates the oversimplified claim that clothing causes rape, arguing instead that rape is perpetrated by a spectrum of offenders with different motivations and methods. Rather than dismissing prevention measures entirely, the piece calls for a more nuanced conversation that acknowledges both the false premise of dress codes and the legitimate complexity of sexual violence.
The Women of Bikutsi: Sexual Perversion or Sexual Liberation?
The writer examines Bikutsi music—particularly K-Tino's explicitly sexual lyrics—as a form of sexual liberation rather than mere perversion. Through personal reflection on discovering the genre's boldness and its treatment by society, the piece argues that the music represents women claiming vocal agency over their own desire and pleasure, even as patriarchal norms punish female artists far more harshly than their male counterparts.
The Boy Child and the Cycle of Violence: Why Rape Prevention Requires Looking at Male Vulnerability
The writer argues that while advocacy for the girl child is necessary and important, a parallel neglect of the boy child—particularly vulnerable boys in poverty, conflict, and street life—has created a generation of men shaped by victimhood and deprivation. Real prevention of sexual violence, the piece contends, requires understanding the conditions that produce perpetrators, not only protecting targets.
The Crossroad of Expectation: On Marriage, Nostalgia, and the Millennial Woman
A reflection on the generational collision reshaping marriage and partnership in Cameroon, where millennial women—educated, independent, and career-driven—encounter men shaped by nostalgic visions of their mothers' domestic roles. The piece asks whether the 90s generation can adapt to new relational possibilities or will remain trapped between incompatible ideals.
Daughters, Ambition, and the Cost of Conditional Futures
The writer reflects on how gendered expectations—particularly the assumption that women will subordinate careers to family—shape girls' aspirations from childhood onward. Drawing on personal experience and family observation, the piece asks whether societies are truly enabling daughters to dream freely, or subtly steering them toward self-imposed limits.
Le Syndrome du Call-Box: On Imitation and the Limits of Cameroon's Creative Ambition
The writer reflects on Cameroon's propensity to replicate successful ventures without innovation—from twerking livestreams to entertainment blogs to rival music factions—tracing this pattern to what he calls 'Le Syndrome du call-box,' a mentality that limits both business models and imagination.
Thank You to All the Poise Ladies
In March 2020, Poise celebrated its female contributors in a special themed month, and the response exceeded expectations—nearly daily publications showcasing writing on diverse topics from relationships and business to research and personal reflection. The founders reflect on what this outpouring of trust and participation reveals about the platform they have spent three years building.
Thirty Going Twenty, or Eighty Five: Purpose as the Measure of a Life
A reflective essay on the gap between societal timelines for marriage and the deeper question of personal purpose. The writer traces her own journey—from ending a promising relationship over differing marriage timelines a decade earlier to arriving at 30 unmarried but increasingly clear about what she actually seeks in partnership.
When Decency Became a Judgment
The writer reflects on how social media shaming around women's clothing choices has become reflexive and counterproductive. Rather than reforming behavior, public condemnation—rooted in older village norms around modesty—reveals more about the judges than the judged.
Woman, Choose Yourself First
A Cameroonian woman interrogates the gendered conditioning that teaches girls to perform femininity and domestic competence for male approval, rather than for themselves. The writer argues that women's self-love and autonomy—in education, ambition, appearance, and life choices—are not threats but necessities, and that societal pressure to prioritize men's comfort over women's flourishing is both unjust and self-defeating.
The Invisible Strength: Single Motherhood in Contemporary Cameroon
A frank, unflinching account of the realities of single motherhood—the abandonment, the financial strain, the social stigma—and a quiet insistence that despite these hardships, a single mother can build a fulfilled life. The writer speaks from lived knowledge, offering practical and emotional counsel to women navigating this path alone.
Internalized Patriarchy: Women as Its Custodians
This piece examines how patriarchy persists not through male coercion alone, but through women who have internalized sexist norms and pass them to others—mothers who enforce shame around menstruation and sexuality, aunts who blame female victims, and communities that subordinate women's ambitions to marriage prospects. The writer argues that these internalized beliefs, absorbed from childhood, have become so normalized that women mistake compulsion for choice.
On Beauty Pageants and the Cost of Comparison
The writer argues that beauty pageants, particularly Miss Cameroon, enforce narrow and exclusionary standards of feminine appearance while undermining women's intellectual worth. Through personal reflection on her own relationship with these competitions, she contends that such contests damage women's self-regard and perpetuate harmful beauty hierarchies.
Do We Really Make It Easier for Women?
The writer reflects on how social and cultural pressure undermine formal equality for women, tracing this pattern through a formative school experience where girls choosing a technical subject over domestic science faced institutional shaming and deliberate humiliation. The piece asks whether laws and slogans can override the deeper, unspoken consensus that women belong in prescribed roles.
Woman: The Beautiful Mystery
A celebratory portrait of womanhood that moves beyond the stereotype of female complexity to honor the multifaceted strength, generosity, and resilience women embody. The writer traces the arc from perceived contradiction—the moods, the drama, the skepticism—to revelation: that women are simultaneously nurturing and formidable, intuitive and wise, self-sacrificing yet unbreakable.
Four Good Reasons Why Feminising Healthcare Can Help Achieve Universal Health Coverage
The writer, a practising physician in Cameroon, argues that gender equality and women's empowerment are essential tools for achieving universal health coverage in Africa. Drawing on personal experience—from societal pressure against a medical career to clinical moments where women's decision-making authority is overridden—she identifies four intersecting domains: women's health outcomes, women's leadership in healthcare systems, economic justice, and equitable decision-making power.
The Trap of Perpetual Beauty Standards
A personal reckoning with the impossibility of keeping pace with shifting beauty ideals—from childhood messaging about 'correct' features, through the adoption of cosmetics as armor, to a hard-won understanding that validation through appearance is a drug without a cure. The writer traces how beauty standards are both universal human psychology and manufactured cruelty, and asks what remains of us when appearance inevitably fails.
Feminism and Proof: On Building Beyond Gatekeepers
The writer reflects on his experience facing racial dismissal from a U.S. sociology professor, using it to critique what he calls 'feminism of entitlement'—the notion that progress comes primarily through complaint and representation in elite spaces rather than through demonstrated competence. He argues that sustainable change comes when women (and marginalized groups broadly) build undeniable skill and visibility in all fields, not merely the highest positions.
Dear Mama: There's More to Your Daughter Than Meets the Male Gaze
A letter from daughter to mother reflecting on the care and intention behind maternal guidance, while questioning the limiting framework that reduces a woman's value to her utility as a wife. The writer traces how the maxim 'Men want assets not liabilities' echoes through family, church, media, and popular culture—and gently pushes back against its narrowness.
Virginity and the Hymen: Separating Fact from Cameroon's Cultural Mythology
This essay dismantles the widespread Cameroonian belief that bleeding during first intercourse proves virginity, drawing on anatomical fact to show that the hymen's state reveals nothing reliable about sexual history. The writer argues that subjecting women to virginity tests based on this misconception is both medically unfounded and ethically indefensible.
Am I My Sister's Keeper? On Doubt, Desire, and the Cost of Success
A reflective essay prompted by an overheard remark about a young woman's expensive car. The writer examines why Cameroonian society—particularly women—so readily attributes a young woman's visible success to sexual favor rather than her own effort, and asks whether this reflex is rooted in observable reality or in deeper anxieties about gender and economic power.
The Trap of Beauty Standards and the Search for Authentic Self
A personal account of growing up under rigid beauty ideals, only to recognize their constant, exhausting mutability. The writer traces her journey from shame to acceptance, examining how societies weaponize appearance standards while acknowledging the real social costs of ignoring them.
The Millennial Marriage Crossroads: Women's Independence and the Male Reckoning
A Cameroonian writer traces how the 90s generation—nostalgic for their parents' world of clear gender roles—now faces a different reality: women who are economically independent, professionally powerful, and unwilling to be silent partners. The piece argues that men must evolve to match the social transformation already underway, or millennial marriage will remain a site of friction rather than complementarity.
The Millennial Marriage Paradox: Women's Evolution and Men's Nostalgia
The writer examines the generational collision between millennial women who have built independent careers and lives, and millennial men shaped by nostalgia for their mothers' domestic role. She argues that both genders have adapted to technological and social change, yet struggle to reimagine partnership when economic and professional realities demand new definitions of marriage and complementarity.
Ça À Cuit: Reading Beyond the Cautionary Tale
A critical examination of Ko-C's popular song, which frames an unwanted pregnancy as moral failure. The writer argues that the song, while appearing to warn young women, actually masks deeper questions about gender, sexual autonomy, responsibility, and the asymmetrical social judgment applied to men and women.
On Virginity Testing in Cameroon: Why Bleeding Is Not Proof
This post examines the cultural belief that bleeding during first intercourse proves virginity, establishing through medical fact that the hymen's condition has no reliable connection to sexual history. The writer argues that virginity testing—whether cultural or clinical—is both scientifically baseless and ethically harmful.
Body Shaming in Cameroon: A Contested Practice
This analytical piece examines body shaming as a social practice in Cameroon, presenting arguments on both sides of whether it is harmful or justified. The writer considers the psychological and social costs of public criticism of bodies alongside claims that such shaming might encourage healthier behaviors.
Monique Ntumngia's Singular Fight for Young Women
The writer celebrates Monique Ntumngia, founder of Green Girls' Organisation, who won the VISA Everywhere Initiative Women's Global Edition prize and has brought STEM education and employment to over 800 women across rural Cameroon. Through training in renewable energy and waste conversion, her work addresses both the under-representation of women in technical fields and material inequality in less-resourced communities.
Feminism Shaming
The writer responds to widespread social ridicule of feminism in Cameroon by reclaiming the term's basic definition—the advocacy of gender equality—and tracing concrete historical wins it has secured for women. Against caricatures of feminists as bitter or man-hating, the piece insists that feminism has been and remains advocacy, not ideology.
Feminism Is Not a Quest for Payback
The writer argues that feminist critique of gender discrimination often mischaracterizes historical customs as deliberately malicious rather than pragmatic responses to the realities of their time. By examining inheritance practices, physical capability differences, and cross-cultural examples, the writer proposes that meaningful change requires understanding tradition's logic before dismissing it—not framing progress as payback against men.
Askia and Otang: Women Sustaining Cameroon's Hip-Hop
A close reading of two female rappers—Askia and Otang—as rare keepers of authentic hip-hop craft in Cameroon, even as male peers abandon the genre for afropop. The writer examines a recent rap challenge that devolved into personal attacks, and offers frank counsel on how both artists might navigate visibility, maturity, and the perils of industry comparison.
Maahlox and the Game of W(h)oes: On Spectacle, Complicity, and the Rhetoric of Mirror-Holding
A critical examination of Cameroonian musician Maahlox's claim that his sexually explicit and provocative music videos serve as societal critique. The writer argues this stance represents intellectual dishonesty—that one cannot claim to fight systemic ills while profiting from and actively participating in the depravity being depicted.
Am I My Sister's Keeper? On Women, Success, and Social Suspicion
The writer reflects on a moment of casual misogyny—overhearing men attribute a young woman's Mercedes to sexual favours—and traces the deeper, more troubling pattern: that women themselves are often the harshest judges of other women's success, reflexively assuming corruption rather than competence.
Miss Coconut Heads: On Beauty Pageants and the Absence of Substance
The writer articulates a sustained critique of beauty pageants in Cameroon, arguing they celebrate appearance over achievement and reduce women to ornament. The post calls out the gap between pageant rhetoric about 'empowerment' and the lack of intellectual rigor or originality demanded of contestants.