#100women

We had a blast last week participating in the #100women debate for BBC. It was very informative as it made us ask ourselves questions that we may never have.

 

 

 

 

Does being pretty help open doors for us?

Does the society affect the way we live our lives as women? Who is a good woman?

 

 Who is a good Woman? This question had the room come to a standstill because the definition of good is something none of us seem to have.

 

When someone asked a mum in the group would you let your daughter be an actress? She said no. We decided that our society’s perception about actresses made her appalled by the idea without her realizing it (she said society doesn’t influence her decisions)

 

In truth, we should be the best version of ourselves and we should want that for our daughters no matter the profession they choose. Isn’t this what makes us modern women? All this is easier said than done.

 

 

 What defines a good woman? Society, family etc. Is there a yardstick to measure goodness? I tweeted this and it’s got lots of exposure as shown below. Even a cartoonist made a comic about it (LOL).

 

 

Growing up, my mum’s opinion of what a good girl I was, depended on me doing all my chores and never disagreeing with her instructions. My dad was more liberal, he indulged me with intellectual conversations and allowed me to argue my case as a teenager but he let me know that there was evil in this world and he had a sense of right and wrong.

 

 

In high school, for most part I was a devoted protestant Christian and my idea of what was good was as defined by proverbs 31: 10 – 16  

 

Epilogue: The Wife of Noble Character

¹⁰ A wife of noble character who can find?
    She is worth far more than rubies.
¹¹ Her husband has full confidence in her
    and lacks nothing of value.
¹² She brings him good, not harm,
    all the days of her life.
¹³ She selects wool and flax
    and works with eager hands.
¹⁴ She is like the merchant ships,
    bringing her food from afar.
¹⁵ She gets up while it is still night;
    she provides food for her family
    and portions for her female servants.
¹⁶ She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
¹⁷ She sets about her work vigorously;
    her arms are strong for her tasks.
¹⁸ She sees that her trading is profitable,
    and her lamp does not go out at night.
¹⁹ In her hand she holds the distaff
    and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
²⁰ She opens her arms to the poor
    and extends her hands to the needy.
²¹ When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
    for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
²² She makes coverings for her bed;
    she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
²³ Her husband is respected at the city gate,
    where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
²⁴ She makes linen garments and sells them,
    and supplies the merchants with sashes.
²⁵ She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come.
²⁶ She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
²⁷ She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
²⁸ Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
²⁹ “Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
³⁰ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
³¹ Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

 

 

 

So, it goes on and on. Do you notice that she is married? (Pressure is on) Single ladies, any hope for us the imperfect ones, who take pride in our imperfections? Who love our independence and our sense of self-worth is not defined by a man but by our accomplishments?

 

A woman needs to be good to be considered for marriage.  How do they know she is good? The low body count?

 

Who sets all these expectations? Society? Family, religion or peers. We can’t ignore these expectations but how we react to them as women is totally up to us.

 

Good and bad is about perspective. I think the lessons learned from this discussion is to be more understanding of different perspectives and as women we should be less judgmental of others who don’t share our values. This can be difficult but because some doesn’t act or think like you doesn’t make them wrong.

 

Name calling other women etc. is often perpetuated by women. How then do we expect men to treat us differently? Be nice today, if you see someone behave differently from you. Perhaps ignore it, if it doesn’t impact on you directly and if you must ask enquire, proceed with caution because their response to you may not be what you expect. ( ask the lady , who adjusted my dress at the airport , I turned back and told her that she was wrong for touching me . she apologized . She was rude , I wore a knee length dress intentionally , I knew it jumps up when I move and it didn’t bother me , why did she need to pull it down for me ? ) we don’t need to justify our appearance but I must say dress for the occasion (that’s pretty important!!)

 

 In summary, Be You and have fun, Life is too short for anyone to define what makes you good ladies …. Be Amazing and breakdown doors and catwalk in …J

 

 

Cheers

Lagos female

I recently moved cities so I have been trying to adjust to a new schedule, missing my friends and being amazing which is hard  .To be honest some days , I just want to find a quiet room and scream ; endlessly. I feel tensed and knotted up, sometimes somewhat invisible.

As, it pertains all things change, I start out excited then, I coast till I find a balance. So, I am now in the city of Lagos, which is like New York. It’s a crowded, busy city, with endless streams of people everywhere on the sidewalks at all times. This is different for me.

 

I am an Abuja citizen, I see crowds in Abuja on Fridays , when I go to the outskirts  or the open market. I avoid crowds. In Lagos this is almost impossible. People enjoy the outdoors. It seems the indoors is meant for sleeping and other intimate rituals but people like to live in this city . It’s scary, yet refreshing.

What I have noticed in Lagos is people don’t stare at you strangely in public environments, so much when you are alone (I have gone for lunch twice alone and dinner once). Ladies look extremely attractive without getting gawked at and it seems people have grown accustomed to the Lagos female being loud. They pay you no attention.

At work, I had an incident where a colleague was being addressed in atone I felt was rude and I stepped in and got shocked as everyone said (these one's speak to each other in this way, don’t get involved) I was like oh wow, for the sake of a third party observer they should be mindful of words used because you never know.

Next remark I heard from her was “you, don’t know where to stop this your female rights thing”, I smiled (Lesson learnt, never defend a female who doesn’t want you to).

Good news, I rented an apartment without presenting a fake husband. The landlady did ask to meet up and asked questions about work to verify the source of income. So not all landladies are unreasonable J.

I still had vendors who helped set up my apartment say things like: ‘auntie, na God oh, some men can’t afford to live in this area (LOL)!

The electrician said (your chairman is trying oh, look at how you are setting up. All you need now is a husband, may God do it for you.) (LOL)!

I haven’t gone dancing, or on a first date yet or done anything extremely fun but I intend to and give you the updates from a single crazy feminist, yet man loving female.

 

Have a great week  J , be amazing.

What is Gender?

Our last meeting gave birth to a lunch time hashtag - #BeingfemaleinNigeria - that caught fire nationally and beyond, and sparked off discussions about the plight of women and apparently, various genders in given cultural contexts. Florence has also given a whiff of corresponding hashtags to give an idea of where discussions ended.

But wasn't it clear the depth of gender illiteracy prevalent within our context? Did you not get a fit, reading to certain pre-conceptions? Not a few are unaware of what gender really implies. So I think that the next plausible thing to do will be to give a further insight on the what gender and gender sensitivity implies. That should set the tone and stage for subsequent discourse and write up on related issues.

So what exactly is gender and how should it be understood? Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours that a given culture or society associates with a person's biological sex. It is important that we do not confuse this with ‘sex’ - which is the biological and physiological characteristics that define or differentiate a man and a woman. From the above, you can see that the concept of gender, is socially constructed, differ from one society to another, and attribute, behaviours, feelings and responsibilities are not the same overall. So that, aside the biological functions and roles nature assigns to a man or women, there nothing else about gender that is globally accepted. It changes from one society to another.

Gender is also often misunderstood as being a promotion of women’s issues only. Nothing can be more rubbish that this statement. What has given rise to this rhetoric is an increasing advocacy to include women in platforms they should have been a part of right at the beginning. How terrible is it to ask that you be included and your plight be considered when issues that affect you are being considered? Imagine you being a member of the family, and discussions over a movement that will affect you do not include you. Such sense of alienation can kill.

Again, given the socially constructed concept of women being the weaker sex, society has treated the female gender (gender in the context of biological make-up) in a more gruesome and demeaning way than men, accorded the male folk more privileges and rights than women. Hence, it is usually a campaign towards the prevention of obnoxious acts like rape, female genital mutilation, child bride, forced marriage etc, that usually presents gender as 'women issue'.

In such 'struggles', what is being considered mainly, is gender equality, which is an offshoot of or a branch of the discussion on the equality of all mankind. So if you think it is right to stop racism, kill ethnic bigotry and treat all men as equal, but you consider gender equality as 'women issue', then you need a refresher on hypocrisy and double standards.

It is in a bid to address inequality that gender and gender mainstreaming came about. Gender Mainstreaming is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality. Mainstreaming is not an end in itself but a means to achieve the goal of gender equality. Mainstreaming involves ensuring that gender perspectives are central to all that we do in life -  planning, implementation and monitoring of the things we do that affect all sex. It does not pertain to just one sex alone. It affects all.

Women are humans. They have needs like just like any other man on the street. They have ego and sensibilities and desire respect, regard just like their men folk. I have not seen an aspect of their make up or creation that make them less human. What we see today is an extension of mankind's desire to classify itself and assume more importance above others.

Hence, we need to be clear about the following when talking about gender. Gender is socially constructed and not the way God or nature made it. It is impacted by time and context. It is perceived differently by societies and groups. There are functions a man performs in Igbo land that a woman does in India. It is acceptable for women to marry more than one man in some places but a taboo in other places. Gender is also a determinant or shapes the relationship between men and women. A number of considerations about gender are taken from an economic of financial lens. Hence, how is it that a male child is more important than a female? 

But the biggest of them all is the timeless question; How I am supposed to act or not act because I am a woman/ man? This is what it means to be a woman/man at any given place at a particular time.

For me, things will begin to make real sense when we begin to drop specific biases and socially constructed roles and do things because it is what we want to do. That will be the real freedom. But behind every of this definition, the truest sense of freedom lies in our ability to decide how we want to live and truly live it without feeling that social pressure.

So it appears the respondents to our lunch time hashtag did not understand gender in this perspective. That would have made all the difference.

My take away is; maybe if all men are treated equally, all gender are treated equally, the disparities we see today in our society will cease to exist. Just maybe!

The hashtag #beingfemaleinnigeria





The idea was generated after a discussion among the members of the Warmate Bookclub about the Tedtalk print version of “we should all be feminists” by Chiamanada Ngozi Adichie. As we discussed the  excerpts of the talk it began to resonate to our individual experiences. We decided to take turns and describe a personal encounter on the topic as it pertains us females in Nigeria. As we started the conversation, even within ourselves we realized that some of the male members of our book club were clueless to these issues and some even said it was a non-issue. That as women we were not marginalized, as long as we knew our place. We decided to take the topic to a larger audience and decided to tweet with the hashtag #beingfemaleinnigeria during the lunch break on Tuesday, we agreed Monday evening but I didn’t think it would attract enough attention so we decided in our WhatsApp group that lunch break Tuesday was the date. At noon I went to remind the group on WhatsApp and then I started tweeting using the hashtag within two hours I had close to 200 RTs, it was wild and twitter was on fire.  .

The key topics were on marriage, sexual harassment at the work place, body images, relationships, gender specific roles. The trend gave birth to other trends such as: beingmaleinnigeria, beingfemaleinghana, beingfemaleinbangladesh etc.

In my opinion, most of these issues stems from prehistoric preconceptions of gender roles. The woman is a care giver, a home maker while the man is the hunter and provider. The problem is that times are changing yet, in Nigeria we women are still expected to evolve to working women and still support the man in all his endeavors without cutting us a slack. The 21^st century woman, is a superwoman, she works hard during the day, goes home after work and prepares meals, wakes up early and  gets the kids to school. This makes you wholesome and a role model. Should you decide to be more ambitious and vie for more challenging roles, there’s a possibility that our male counterparts would find you too difficult to handle because you won’t accept to be under a man. To be fair, not all men are repelled by strong independent women but the general perception is that all the woman’s glory is insufficient without a male covering ( his name ).  Today, we have females in high levels of governments, parastatal, aviation, and engineering. Yet, we still say (this includes me: oh wow, she’s a female pilot, the MD is a woman etc.) women being on top of their game should be the new perception and the norm.

There are some women, who have decided especially in Nigeria, who want to take everything from a man. Some make it a lifestyle choice but that’s their choice as we have playboys (called Babyboy’s now), we have the sugar daddy set up. These men are not judged yet every attractive single female at a hotel lobby, or driving a nice car is an aristo (an escort of some sort?) this is not the default female in Nigeria.

The aim of our hashtag is to educate and challenge the norm preset mindset and to question the average Nigerian to think different. Do I expect my man to farm now? Is it acceptable to pay for part of my wedding now? (Yes) The ambition is one day, our daughters would make choices that suit them and they won’t be questioned. It would be normal for a female to do big stuff.

Nigerian females are great! Yeah it’s our default, we can cook jollof rice, clean, run conglomerates and fly airplanes it’s not a big deal. This is gender equality, what a man can do, I can do it too if I choose to.

it created a worldwide sensation . please find attached some links to further enhance your education or curiosity ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/30/africa/being-female-in-nigeria/

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33239356

http://www.channel4.com/news/everyday-sexism-my-experience-of-beingfemaleinnigeria http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33239356

http://www.buzzfeed.com/shyamanthaasokan/being-female-in-nigeria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/01/being-female-in-nigeria-chimamanda-adichie-twitter-sexism

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/01/beingfemaleinnigeria-discrimination-nigerian-women-_n_7704658.html