The feminist goal has not been successful because most women actually want to be protected by a man. They do not want to be independent. They feel they have the right to find security under their men. I can reasonably say that women actually need to be protected. Either by men or by law or by society. Women left to themselves to battle affairs of life by themselves can be quite hard on them. And many women know this. They do not ask for much. I believe women want to be protected, but they would not want this protection to include violence on themselves by their men who are supposed to give them security, they also do not want the protection to mean that their freedom of choice would not be respected.
If I were a woman, I would say to the man and to society: protect me from things I can’t protect myself from, but please, reserve me my freedom of choice and accord me respect as an entity too.
Let’s talk a little on this protection.
When a husband dies and his brothers try to take over the estate and assets etc. The first instinct from the men is not that of greed. They actually want to protect the estate and ensure it doesn’t run aground. It is not always the case that a husband’s family takes over assets and abandons the widow and her kids. Their have been lots of cases where the husbands family actually successfully manages affairs and ensures that a widow never suffers lack.
A lot of women want these assets to be left to them and their children to manage. They have the right of course. But can they survive? How many female business moguls do we know? These are what the men think.
I agree with you @TolaO. But there are still problems. I don’t know if it’s because of how tradition and society has wired us but I think many Nigerian women still expect men to perform some defined roles: Being a breadwinner, even though she earns a salary; standing up to aggressors in her defence; Initiating sex….and I think all these amount to some form of innate desire for protection, which in a way is complemented by an innate desire by men to give protection.
However, coming back to the main issue, I think that a lot of issues African women raise are very valid. Let me highlight some things I detest in the way African women are treated:
1. Why should it be considered fairly OK for a man to cheat on his wife or girlfriend, and it be considered abominable for a woman to do same? I once had a discussion with a male friend who said he can’t promise not to cheat on his wife, and that if he is caught, he will just show his remorse to her and expect her to forgive him; but if she DARES cheat on him, she would leave his house that instant–she will be divorced. You can’t imagine how painful it was for me to hear that. That level of domination of women is at best disgusting to me.
2. Why should a woman who is also a working class woman be expected to cook meals regularly for her husband? Some men say they would only eat food their wife prepares. I say, I can eat food from anyone, in so far as such food is vetted or ‘organized’ by my wife. She has a life too!
3. In some cases, the pressure to give birth immediately after marriage is nonsensical to me. Why? What if she is in school? When I was in school, two very hardworking Moslem girls in my class got married and got pregnant: Things went downhill from there.
4. Female circumcision, especially because of the health risks, the possibility of a loss of libido and the very vague advantages it is touted to have.
5. Wife-battery. This is extremely abominable. I don’t even have words to describe the disgust and pain I feel here. Luckily my father never beat my mom. I think I would have done something terrible, had that happened.
So yes, women have valid reasons for pressing for change. But I am nonetheless disgusted by some of their reasons.
And can someone explain this ‘right to do what they want with their bodies’ in more detail? @jefsaraurmax?
And @babyada, I can’t wait to read your input. Sorry about the loss of your epistle. I hope you are resurrecting it.
Fantastic @babyada. Just how I think it should be.
Increasingly, women are becoming very powerful. I assure you that the level of influence the man wielded in his family a century ago has waned drastically compared to today. Why? Because women are being more economically empowered daily. And I assure you, everything rests on economic prosperity/empowerment, from the sophisticated power tussle between the white house and the kremlin, to the little squabbles in the hamlets that litter ohaozara local government in Ebonyi state. The louder voice is the more economically prosperous. Today, in decision making and all, men are compelled to listen more to women and are as such increasingly less likely or able to wield unilateral powers. How many men can indeed say to their wives in today’s cosmopolitan Lagos, ‘get out of my house?’, when they both pooled resources to build or rent the said house? Earlier this year, I invested mean money in a business that surprisepingly has just not yielded or budged till date. I am still talking, feeding and not feeling the pinch cos I have a cushion, well padded, to fall on in my wife. She even had to pay this year’s rent. How do i then tell her to ‘get out of my house?’ no matter the level of provocation?
It is the story of many men out there today in the world if you ask around. That is just an example.
Albeit, man’s veto still is there. Typified by our menacing physical build, and the fear in women that the broken home usually crumbles on their permed heads, well and truly, worse than on the man’s clean shave. We put our feet down and a wise, trouble avoiding wife reluctantly acquiesces. Still I assure you, the issue of women needing protection and all will be a thing of the past in the next few decades. That species of humans is just totally cheated. But they are rising up to hold their own. Look at something like child birth. Neither specie can achieve it all alone. That is the basic crux of life, atavistically, as we know it, before we began to build complex societies on -isms that are far from reality. It may take time, but men are beginning to see it too, that as economies metamorphose and its proceeds become more equitably accessible, things will change favourably for the woman. It is an unstoppable evolution.
chemokopi 8 months, 3 weeks ago.
I don’t need a man to protect me.I need the law to treat me equally.I need my daughters to be able to choose their husband if they want to marry and not have their father decide.I need them to decide if they want to go to college, not somebody telling them they are not allowed to study.I need them to decide if they want to stay home and take care of their house or go to work and have a career or both.The important word here is choice.No choice is right or wrong as long as you have the choice.A lot of women have been denied the choice.Their life has been decided by others and this is what I think needs to change.Women are able, just like men.They are as smart and sometimes as strong.They need to be given the opportunity.Being able to choose is the only thing they need and having the law protect those choices.
