Much research has been done on the status of African women under the ideologies of feminism, motherism, womanism and accomodationism with the sole aim of correcting the devaluation of women by the early male writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, et al., who represented women as disparaged. Even early female writers including Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta did not salvage their devalued situation because their heroines were crushed at the end.

At the close of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first century, however, some female African scholars, seeing the need for a radical elevation of African women's status, set out to correct their devalued image. As fellow women who understand their predicament they objectively portray their woeful experiences in the traditional culture. Emenyonu puts it succinctly that ‘African women scholars too, were no longer satisfied to have somebody else define for them the aesthetics of female writing, or patronizingly describe for them the dynamics and intrinsic realities of being a woman in the African sociocultural and political environment’ (Emenyonu 2004: xii). These female intellectual writers redressing the injustice and subjugation of African women highlight their unique qualities to prove, according to Yvonne Vera, that ‘women are what the men are not’ (1991: 1). In support of the intellectual female writers who support the cause of African women, Beyala has argued that ‘The African woman faces three types of battle. First, she has to struggle because she is a woman.