In view of the International day of women on March 8 I would like to talk about the relationship between women and men. We have generally heard “women are equal to men.” I do not necessary disagree or agree with that statement. I think that this statement is ambiguous as it can mean they are equal in all aspects or that they are equal as human beings. To start meaning that they are equal in all aspects is ludicrous. Mathematically when you say two things are equal it means that the two are exactly the same. But from biologically to psychologically passing through physically, mentally and emotionally men and women are different and there is a lot of research work out there that supports this. Even socially the roles of each are distinguished from the others roles. I will not go in to what role is for men and what role is for women as it varies from society to society and why these rule exist is a debatable issue. But there are some feminist who really believes women=men and will take any opportunity to call foul whenever they think that there is an inequality between genders. And this has prompted some men to become less sensitive to ladies in difficult situations. I remember one of my friends ones said
".. The day women started talking of equality with men that was when my gentleness went out the window"An Ivorian musician once sang
"… in the 2000s (…) if I [the man] pay the electricity bill, you [the woman] will pay for the water… "This can be natural for man people living in the West but in Africa it sound strange as it is the role of the man to take care of the household even if the woman makes more than him. Another generally heard statement is that “What a man can do a woman can do and even better”. Well it is vice versa, what a woman can do a man can also do and even better. But we have to realize that even though these statements are true there are things that a man is better suited for and things that a woman is better suited for. For example Pierre and Marie Curie, she died of radiation poisoning while he did not because in their work even though they were exposed to the similar dose of radiation she was more at risk than him. I believe in complementarity and justice between the genders. In a couple if the role of the genders are clear I think that there is more understanding and prosperity of the couple. Ok here I do not mean that the man should only be providing for the couple and the woman should cook, clean etc. No, I mean that the man provides the strong base that supports the family (financially, morally, educationally etc.) while the woman provides balance (kindness, understanding, emotions etc.). In society justice should be applied between the genders.But sadly this is not the case. There is still a lot of double standards when it comes to women and men. And as men we do not really imagine what women goes through every day. A short video made recently shows us when the role is switched and a man is exposed to sexism and sexual violence in a society ruled by women (NSFW link). In another experiment a youtuber wears a yoga pants and films the reaction of passersby. In a different video he tried to see what will people do when a girl wearing the hijab was harassed. We men have to watch those videos and reflect on them and how we treat our fellow humans.
But what alarms me the most in the situation of the woman and girl child in the whole world is the violence part. Sex trafficking, sexual violence, domestic violence, FGMs you name it. And most of those atrocities are committed by men sometimes relatives of the victim. A report by the World Health Organization and other groups in 2013 says more than one in three women worldwide has experienced physical or sexual violence. And it is not specific to the so called “third world countries” even developed countries have high prevalence rate. In another survey carried out by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, about a third of all women in the EU have experienced either physical or sexual violence since the age of 15. In this chaos everyone male or female needs to start fighting back against the oppression of more than half of the population of the earth because I believe that the number of good people in this world far out numbers that of bad people.
I think we're conflicted on gender roles. Personally, I feel that as a woman, I tend to certain child-raising details that my husband wouldn't, and he tends to things that I probably wouldn't. It's not that he can't nor that I can't do the things we don't always do, but it is a nature thing.
ReplyDeleteThat said, there will always be times when we need to provide, as women, for the family or when men need to rear younglings. We need to respect each other and stay mindful of gender inequalities.
Thank you Devrie for your comment. That is exactly what I was trying to point out in the article. There are things that women tends to do because of their nature or psychology but society went on to define those things as women's roles. I see not shame but sense of responsibility in a husband that takes care of the younglings, cook and clean.
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