Nairobi, Sept. 11 -- This week I was listening to the celebrated Nigerian author and feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking during an interview with The Economist's public policy editor Sacha Nauta in October 2019. Asked when she first became aware of being a girl, Chimamanda said, in one of her answers, it was when she was in grade three. The teacher one day told the class that whoever performed best in the test would be appointed the class monitor. Chimamanda was the best in the test but the teacher said she could not be the class monitor because she was a girl and only boys were allowed to be class monitors. Accepting her fate, she began to realise that girls were treated differently from boys, but she could not understand why.
What...