Oyeronke Oyewumi shows that the “woman question” is a Western category that cannot be used to interpret Yoruba society. By understanding gender as a specifically Western construction, she reveals how biological determinism organizes social hierarchies in the West and places the notion of “woman” at the center. Her analysis exposes the imposition of these frameworks onto studies of the Yoruba and challenges two pillars of Western feminism: that gender is always socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. In contrast, she argues that precolonial Yoruba society was organized primarily by age rather than gender.