Word.ws English Dictionary

wifeism

wifeism noun: a patriarchal societal tendency whereby women can only achieve things as the wives of men of rank.

Noun

wifeism (uncountable)

  1. (Nigeria) A patriarchal societal tendency whereby women can only achieve things as the wives of men of rank.
    • In this chapter I examine the emergence of wifeism and the bureaucratization of women's concerns in Nigeria through state involvement, especially since the early 1980s.1999, Amrita Basu, C. Elizabeth McGrory, Women's Movements in Global Perspective, page 213
    • But this is not unconnected with the fact that the electoral system in Nigeria is still skewed in favour of wifeism.1999, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Democracy and Civil Society in Nigeria, page 168

Forms of wifeism

alternative formwifism

Origin of wifeism

From wife + -ism.

Questions about wifeism

What does wifeism mean?
Wifeism means a patriarchal societal tendency whereby women can only achieve things as the wives of men of rank.
What part of speech is wifeism?
Wifeism is a noun.

Words near wifeism in the dictionary

  1. wifedom
  2. wifeguy
  3. wifeguys
  4. wifehood
  5. wifehoods
  6. wifeism
  7. wifejak
  8. wifejaks
  9. wifekin
  10. wifekins
  11. wifeless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wifeism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “wifeism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wifeism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.