A year since the last posting, time flies fast indeed. What is new? What gender issues which affect women and girls were our world able to eliminate? Not too long ago, in the news a woman and her daughter were stoned to death because she, the mother, was found in adultery. The age old question, “where was the man in adultery with her”? From bible times to now he seems to elude the captors. With the advancement of women’s entry into education, health care, top professional jobs, etc., can we say whether women and girls have been liberated?
Professional women are still bullied by their male partners and bosses. They are still paid less than their male counterparts. They still face sexual harassment especially if they desire to excel in the jobs. Many of these professional women don’t get to control the money they work for; many more still have to hop to the domestic duties although they work full time jobs. What has change for women and girls?
How many women are raped in their own bedrooms by the men they are with? And what about incest, how many girls are forced to have sex with a family member? Some of these girls are set up by their own mothers and are made to have sexual relations with men so that they can bring money into the home. Then there is the problem of teenage pregnancy and again the male partner young or older gets away unpunished or at least not made to be accountable. What has changed for women and girls?
In some countries male babies are still privileged over females, thus female babies are culled in the pre or post natal stages. Some girls are still denied education and are made to do house chores, gardening and rearing of life stock. What has changed for women and girls? When they still live in fear of men and boys even in their own communities where they live, play and work. When will they be able to walk the streets without being harassed, molested, raped or killed?
With all the seemingly positive advancements humanity has made and the accomplishments women have gained through their struggles, it seems to me that there is a level of archaic brain cobwebs thus keeping human mentalities web locked in the patriarchal system. Much of the rules governing the patriarchal system was formulated by men in the interest of men. Both males and females are victims of the patriarchal system so that both tend to respond to the social, political, economical dictates of it.
So with all the advancements made in the world today and positive, noted accomplishments women gained, human mentality has to be transformed, patriarchal cobwebs have to be swept out in order to address the problems women and girls still face. How do we create these changes?
Education is one of the tools which can be developed and utilized to bring about change. The young mind is proven to be very impressionable so professionals in education and gender development research can development programmes to transform mentalities. The age group from zero to seven is the most important category in which change is likely to occur. We generally have a sense as to what we wish to accomplish in human behavior. The effort has to be a partnership with the major schools i.e. sociology, psychology, philosophy, educators, gender researcher, and parents.
Parents are the most important group in the mix because of their level of interfacing with children at every single stage of human development and can therefore help by bringing to the table their own wisdom about parenting the different age groups. In terms of designing programmes and policies, educators for the zero to seven age group, ought to be seriously consulted as practitioners, they always bring a dimension which cannot be contained nor explained through books. What these programmes will be? We leave that for the proposed teams to produce.
At the ordinary level, the little gender transforming steps we take will go a long way. As simple as boy clean room, wash wares and do laundry and girl climb trees, play foot ball, go out and explore the outdoors can begin transforming gender roles. Of course though we may be adults we can still make choices to model favorable behaviours in front of our children.
So development has taken place and female inroads in professional and other arenas have occurred yet the rate of abuse towards women and girls is still alarming. The solution lies in gender transformation education and modeling with emphasis on the under seven age group because that age is most impressionability. All hands on deck for transformation of mentalities and improvement in gender relations. The young and the instruments of education is they to go to have gender social change.
Sankofa Tuzinde 25th November 2011
In Observance of International Women’s Day 2011