Films made during this era that featured or were created by African women directors featured themes of sexual impression that included polygamy, conflict between modern romance and traditions of arranging marriage, the marginalization of widows and single women, and genital mutilation. Scholars such as Sheila Petty have argued that they should not only be read as portraying an unshakeable patriarchy but as expressions of a general loss of identity, with extreme examples of sexual politics functioning as a "process in which cultural roles can be modified through affective partnerships between men and women.”[17]