Psychological Perception of Masculine Femininity under the Prism of Intermarital Conflicts Complexity in Cotonou/Benin Republic

Abstract

On behalf of sexual equality, some women find it hard to submit to the authority of their husbands. Most of the time, those women are considered as wives with men temperament, exempted of flexibility. Through the colloquial name masculine femininity, this lack of flexibility leads to conflicts in many couples in Cotonou. This research is carried out with a quantitative approach throughou a written questionnaire sent to 83 people with regard to inclusive and exclusive criterias. The reasonable choice method, the iceberg method and the volounteers method are the three main methods used for this research. The methodology helps to collect key information and material which revealed that many men (94%) do not accept wives domination. The data collected from the survey point out that 73,3% and 61,9% of people interviewed, consider wives subjugation to their husbands as a cultural and spiritual fact and agree that women should remain subjugated to men’s authority. However, some of them, 94,1% interviewed, mainly intelectuals, think that we should necessarily refer to law so as to know women and men’s role within couples. They reject any idea of man’s authority on woman. Thus, it is important to highlight that the constant observation of man authority and or woman’s role doesn’t always garantee a couple exempted of conflicts.