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| The African Woman In A Transition Era: Hail the Cornerstones of Africa! |
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African women, traditionally an epitome of forced aloofness in decision-making and community development, are gregariously riding the emancipation yacht of openness, recognition and freedom of speech. Nowhere is this point more illustrated than by their increased parliamentary representation in countries such as Rwanda. Having been relegated to the backward and cobwebbed development backbenches for many years, its rise in social, economic and political significance and influence worldwide is timely.
This emancipation from the old, rigid and parochial dichotomies of only being housewives and homemakers has not only been a breath of fresh air in the miasmic mediocrity of androcentric traditions; it is also a lift to the pedestals of family and societal problem-solving. Many are now recognizing that African women can maintain their traditional role of being good housewives while at the same time effectively participating in societal development issues and their professional engagements, in a perfect juggle of responsibilities.
The recent bagging in of the Nobel Peace Prize by Kenya’s own Professor Wangari Maathai is a pointer in that direction. It was a shot in the arm to the relentless struggle by the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)-afflicted, the battered, the abused, the widowed, the poverty-stricken and the HIV affected African women.
In her efforts to shed off some outdated psychosocial and economic cuticles and frass of discrimination, Professor Maathai has come a long way from facing myopic oppositions, corruption-engineered frustrations, political persecutions and other debilitating acts of destabilization. However, her fighting spirit has never given up. Having burned the midnight oil to conserve existing indigenous forests in Kenya as well as plant millions of trees, no earthly recognition could be more fitting to Professor Wangari. Dubbed “Mama Kenya” for her neutrality in ethnic and political debates, she usually prefers to focus on development issues in her constituency and in other parts of Kenya - and now Africa and the rest of the globe.
Other notable symbols of African women’s awakening include Dr. Graca Matchell, Dr. Julia Ojiambo, Angelique Kidjo, Professor Norah Olembo, Lucy Muthoni Wanyeki, Professor Esther Kahangi and Dr. Anna Tibaijuka, among many others, whose contributions to humanity will remain etched our daily lives and historical memoirs. Professor Kahangi has significantly contributed to the improvement of food security by pioneering tissue culture banana production in East and Central Africa. Dr Tibaijuka’s efforts as the head of the UN-HABITAT to improve living conditions in urban and rural dwellings around the world are laudable.
I was especially impressed by the assertion of Ms. Muthoni-Wanyeki that a woman’s proximity to an important person (read: man) does not in effect make her equally important through induction of the same. This goes a long way to show just how much harder African and Third World women have worked to gauge their rightfully deserved place in today’s society.
However, the achievements by these hard working African women are mirrored against a background of a lot still in dire need of care and attention. Derogatory practices such as FGM, widow oppression, wife battery and the disinheritance of female family members are being carried out unabated in some parts of the African continent.
The real struggle fought by these genuine women has unfortunately been dogged by the influx of less genuine “red-blooded feminists” whose apparent aim has been to pit genders against each other and have the females going for the emotional throats of the males in an unwarranted, circuitous and directionless gender war. This glaring ignominy, compounded by the fact that the larger percentage of these saboteurs is made up of a few pretentious and mostly urban women, does not ring well for the true essence of the years of arduous struggling to uplift the womenfolk from the penitentiary of cultural discrimination and segregation.
Considering that rural African women more often than not has to contend with ignorance, abject poverty and a general lack of resources for development, their situation should be given serious redress by the development and gender experts and policy makers. Due to media inaccessibility, their plights often pass with little mention and this increases the gravity of their woes.
It was not shocking, therefore, to witness a group of rural-based women at a Nairobi Conference criticizing these few pretentious, urban-based colleagues for neglecting them. While this may be partially true, it arouses a need for cross-boundary networking between women for greater capacity building. This can only be initiated in liaison with the rest of the society who will be giving them the relevant props.
As we engage in the ennobling quest of giving African and Third World women access to their rightful place in the society, many African traditions were indeed noble and should therefore not be subjected to wholesale condemnation. Androcentrism should be discarded.
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Antony Felix O. Simbowo
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