“Na Only Woman She Be”

Sexism in Nollywood Through Cinematic Tropes

I grew up watching Nigerian films the way many of us did: on scratched VCDs, satellite TV, and later streaming platforms. Nollywood was entertainment, but it was also instruction. It taught us what kind of women were acceptable, what ambition costs, and the price women pay for stepping outside prescribed roles.

Long before I had the language for patriarchy, I learned its rules through film. Whether it was power, money or independence, women who were depicted as “wanting too much” were rarely allowed peace. Their stories almost always ended in punishment, framed as consequence or “character development.”

Film is never neutral. Nollywood as a cultural force both in Nigeria and the African diaspora, wields soft power: it shapes values, polices behaviour, and quietly disciplines women through narrative repetition. While it often reflects social realities, it frequently stops short of interrogating the structures that produce women’s suffering. Instead, it reinforces them.

Across decades of storytelling, I have noticed two recurring tropes dominate the portrayal of career women: the “Margaret Thatcher” woman and the “Bad Wife.” Together, they form a narrative system that warns women against ambition and redirects them back toward domestication.

The “Margaret Thatcher” Woman

In Nigerian pop culture, calling a woman “Margaret Thatcher” is rarely neutral. The phrase is borrowed from the former British Prime Minister’s global reputation as the “Iron Lady,” but in Nigerian usage it has taken on a more gendered, dismissive meaning. It’s often used to describe women who are seen as too tough, too controlling, too ambitious: women who “fail” to perform softness alongside authority.

Nollywood has embraced this shorthand in its depiction of career women. In films and tv series, powerful women are introduced as emotionally distant, morally ambiguous, or socially deficient. Their authority is framed as excess.

They are successful, but never at ease. Respected, but never loved.

Traits praised in men (decisiveness, ambition, emotional restraint) are “pathologised” in these women. The narrative insists that something is missing.

By 2026, even films marketed as “modern” repeat this logic. In movies like A Sunday Affair (2023) and Love In Every Word (2025), professional women are framed as incomplete until romance enters the picture. Their emotional arc resolves not through self-actualisation or community, but through heterosexual coupling.

For instance, in the Netflix film “A Sunday Affair”, Uche and Toyin are two accomplished and mature women yet their friendship is tested when they both fall in love with and compete for the love of a married man. And while Love In Every Word (2025) was a viral hit last year, I couldn’t help but notice how Chioma (played by Nigerian actress BamBam) is “softened” and “humanised” only when she “submits” emotionally to Obiora.

The message is unmistakable: romance is the cure for female ambition.

Without male validation, they are portrayed as cold, bitter, or lonely. This trope does more than discourage women from leadership. It suggests that female authority itself is unnatural, something that must be neutralised or domesticated.

The “Bad Wife”

If the “Margaret Thatcher” woman is punished for ambition, the Bad Wife is punished for attempting balance.

This trope appears repeatedly in Nollywood domestic dramas. In films like Mr and Mrs (2012) and Trapped In Her World (2025), working wife and mothers are depicted as emotionally absent, distracted, or selfish. Their careers are framed as threats to family stability. For instance in the subplot of Mr and Mrs, Linda (played by Thelma Okoduwa-Ojiji) is a working wife whose high flying career provides for her household and her seemingly idyllic life comes to a halt when she finds out that her husband is having an affair with their domestic staff, Kate. The story frames Linda’s focus on her career as the cause of this infidelity.

When marriages collapse, blame is rarely shared. Husbands’ infidelity is often justified as a reaction to neglect. The woman’s work schedule becomes the silent villain.

What’s particularly insidious is how apology is demanded. These women are often forced to grovel - not for wrongdoing, but for having professional lives. Their redemption arc requires sacrifice: fewer hours at work, abandonment of ambition, or total recommitment to domestic labour.

And yet, the contradiction remains. Stay-at-home mothers are not left out of Nollywood’s narrative punishment as they are also frequently portrayed as lazy, dependent, or unfulfilled, ensuring women lose no matter what choice they make.

Career-focused men, by contrast, are praised as responsible providers. Their absence is noble. Women’s absence is neglect.

Even when working women are shown managing households through planning, delegating, organising, the films still label them negligent.

Domestic labour is invisible, while guilt and shame is constantly reinforced.

Domestication as Subjugation

These tropes are not accidental. They function as tools of social control.

By confining women to the home, Nollywood narratives limit freedom of movement, drain women’s time and energy, and discourage autonomy.

Even as Nollywood expands globally and improves technically, the gender politics remain stubbornly familiar. The aesthetics are modern; the ideology is not.

Women may work but never at the cost of male comfort.

Gendering Behaviour and creating a mental panopticon

Beyond the gendered depiction of roles, Nollywood polices behaviour.

Confidence, assertiveness, and directness are coded as masculine. Women in leadership are expected to be endlessly pleasant, emotionally available, and agreeable. Resistance is framed as disobedience. Assertiveness becomes arrogance.

Over time, these portrayals shape women’s self-perception. They encourage internalised oppression, learned helplessness, and self-policing. Women begin to shrink their desires before the world is able to.

Why This Matters

Nollywood doesn’t just tell stories, it shapes our world as Nigerians.

When films repeatedly punish women for ambition, they normalise female self-denial. They tell women to stay small, stay grateful, stay quiet.

But cinema can also be a site of resistance. To critique Nollywood is not to reject it: it is to demand better from a cultural force that shapes millions of lives.

This essay is part of my ongoing 8-week personal curriculum for Nigerian feminists and womanists, where I critically engage with books, films, research articles, and popular culture.

If you’d like access to the full curriculum spreadsheet, you can sign up via this link.

It’s a self-directed resource designed to be explored at your own pace.

Because our stories matter.

And so does how they’re told.