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Various governments and organisations have tried to take steps to eradicate this mentality – a form of this is called affirmative action. For example, Uganda has employed the use of a lower pass mark for girls at all stages of education. This means that a girl can get into a university or secondary school with lower marks than her male counterparts. Uganda also has laws that ensure that out of eleven leadership posts in a certain area, five are to be taken solely by women and the other six can be contested by both sexes. This is done to ensure that there is adequate representation of women in parliament. However, the two above methods of female emancipation are extremely controversial. Although many women see it as a step forward in the struggle to have women appreciated for their worth, others look at it as the worst form of female degradation yet. They say that lowering pass marks for females just makes them seem inadequate in comparison to men. They say that if a woman can do anything a man can do, there is no need for them to have lower pass marks. The same principle applies to the way that women are given posts that men cannot compete for - are women so unqualified in comparison to men that they don’t have a chance when competing for posts with them? They then say that this is also the reason women aren’t given their due respect when they get posts. Just handing the posts away to anyone who is born female undermines all that they have worked so hard to create; after all would you rather be treated by a qualified male doctor or his female counterpart who had her pass mark lowered? It gives the false impression that a man in any post is more qualified for it than a woman.
However, in retaliation, some people say that these women who have been given reduced pass marks deserve them. They claim that most of these women do not give up their previous duties in the household when they go to study. Studying often means that you have to get up earlier and go to sleep later in order to complete all of the tasks you have outside of school. This, they feel, is the reason why they deserve lowered pass marks - they do not have adequate study time and sometimes this hurts their marks. They also say that if we do not ‘slot’ these women into these posts then future female leaders, doctors, lawyers and engineers will have nothing to look forward to. These women serve as realistic goals young women can aspire to. They serve to help these girls keep hope – if she can do it, why can’t I?
But do we sometimes get so carried away with affirmative action that we end up creating a whole new problem? In a bid to try and eradicate female oppression have we began to construct an entirely new problem altogether? Could it be that with all the attention given to promoting girls and their rights we have begun to forget the boys? The fact is it would defeat the cause for us to eliminate a problem by forming a new one; unfortunately, that may be just what we are doing. With lowered pass marks for girls, posts preserved for women and an increased number of ‘pro-female’ laws, we may end up encouraging boys/men to give up. After all, why should they put in any effort if they are at an unfair disadvantage? A good example is the bank-managing sector; how many male bank managers do you see these days? Does it make sense to complain that there are too few women in a certain field and replace that with too few men? Perhaps that is the reason why so many men in Africa today are against female emancipation. Maybe they are just afraid that if they do not watch out, they too may need emancipation in the very near future.
When you mention culture, especially conflict in modern and ‘ancient’ culture, the term gender difference always comes to mind. But when you hear the term, what exactly do you think of? Do you picture women slaving away in a kitchen, or do you see a violent husband mercilessly whipping his wife to the point of death? You probably find the term synonymous with things like early marriages, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the inability of girls to receive an education. But is that all? Unknown to many, gender differences are a part of every single day. It is impossible to go anywhere in the world and not find it looming its ugly head. The difference, in reality, is the degree to which it manifests itself in our societies.
But what exactly is this ‘it’ we have referred to so passionately? What is this real problem that all of us encounter at one time or another? What is this gender difference, or more accurately, how do we view men and women within society today?
From time immemorial, identification has been hugely important to humanity. We are always trying to comprehend the unknown by naming it. We have numerous names for the same thing, each name trying to depict a meaning or description of the thing. Scientific names, casual names, nicknames, they are all different but have one thing in common – they portray a part of the article. Everyone has a name, and so does everything, and this serves to give us an identity, some uniqueness, a feeling that there is something individual about us. Perhaps the reason there has been so much female oppression in African society is because, from the time they are born, that right to individuality is taken away. At first, they are ‘the-daughter-of-someone’. You have all heard a lady in Swahili being referred to as ‘Binti so-and-so’; (‘Binti’ is directly translated as daughter). Then they get married and, instead of this giving them a sense of freedom, they become ‘wife-of-so-and-so’ and when they finally get children, they become ‘mother-of-someone’. We have all come across a ‘Mama Mumo’ or ‘Mama Jomo’ at one time or another. All through their stages of development, women are tied to someone else - their fathers, their husbands and finally their sons. They are never appreciated as individuals. But that is finally beginning to change; women are being accepted as the commendable, praiseworthy equal members of society they are – or are they?
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Thomas Igeme
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