Nollywood actress and filmmaker Mary Remmy Njoku has challenged the way society labels women as “gold diggers” when they benefit from the wealth or generosity of affluent men.
Njoku raised the issue in a social media post, questioning why men who enjoy similar financial advantages from wealthy friends are often described using more favourable terms such as friendship, loyalty or brotherhood.
To illustrate her point, the actress presented a scenario involving a successful man she identified as Emeka, who allegedly returned home after becoming wealthy and had 17 grown men regularly around him.
According to Njoku, the men ate his food, wore clothes he bought, had their bills paid and enjoyed his financial support. Yet, she noted, their relationship with the wealthy man would typically be described as “brotherhood,” “networking” or “loyalty.”
“If benefiting from a wealthy person’s generosity makes a woman a gold digger, what exactly do we call the 17 men eating his food, wearing what he bought, enjoying his money and calling themselves his boys?” she asked.
Njoku argued that the issue is not necessarily people’s attraction to wealth but the different language used to judge men and women who benefit from it.
“The double standard isn’t that people love money. It’s that when men benefit from proximity to wealth, we give the behaviour a respectable name. When women do the same thing, we give it a dirty one,” she wrote.
