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The women liberation movement has roots as far back as the first quarter of the 17th century. In the 1830’s, it become an organized movement of high reckoning with a clarion call on working women. There was a call to women around the world to throw their needles to the wind and to press into the employment industry where they would get better pay and be conductors of cars or pilots of aero planes if necessary.
With this consciousness created, women began to re-think the kitchen and to no longer see it as their appropriate “office”. Lured by gender consciousness, women began to make their voices heard. This began to happen not only in the church and politics but also within their respective families. This was happening as a way of tampering with the long existing male chauvinistic and patriarchic dominance. To accelerate issues in this regard some women started denouncing vehemently men’s views of them. As Shakespeare would say, “frailty is but another name for women”. They began to view themselves as “necessary good” not “necessary evils” and as “effective begotten creatures” not “defective misbegotten” beings. Now, just as always arguments rise and fall but those who had no interest before are declaring their stance on feminine existential issues. This article proposes to generally examine the argument for and against women emancipation and to draw a response.
Women Emancipation: What it Entails:
Women emancipation reflects a change of women status in society from the prevailing status characterized by subservient stereotypes, to one more inclusive, which will avail the equal rights and opportunities with the male counterparts. It is a call, in the proper sense, for the restoration of the fundamental equality of women and men in praxis.
The Pro-Arguments:
Some women and protagonists of women emancipation have sought to establish why women should be regarded and seen as being complementary and peerless pairs to men. As one questions the status quo of male chauvinistic and andocentric tendencies they explain that women need to rise for self-liberation by not allowing themselves to be sexually exploited by men. This goes for sexual exploitation of women expressed in the general toleration of male sexual indulgence by both public opinion and courts, in the physical abuse of women or in the legal system which condemns the prostitute and protects her clients. In the Christian circle it has been argued that it is women who support the church; build by mobilization and monetary contributions, the pastor’s quarters and care for him. They are the people that one readily finds in the church and in ministries within the church. Therefore if the advancement of the church throughout the world fully utilizes their efforts then their dynamic contributions and presence must be recognized even in the churches’ ministerial hierarchy as in the ordination of women as priests.
In many quarters today women emancipation is reached for in order to eliminate what some term as the “burden of motherhood”, “marriage” and “family values”. In the opinion of many core feminists motherhood and the like are not only obsolete but also at least part if not the nexus of the prevailing credence to the male dominance over them.
Furthermore, some argue that this movement gingers women to champion the cause for the defeat of the child-marriage system. There is a change in the mentality where women are being considered as childbearing machines and objects of pleasures. Even issues of forced widowhood, purdah system and self-immolation of the wife upon the death of her husband, which had made women slaves in male dominated society calls for emancipation, some argue.
Women emancipation crowns their arguments with a fact that women are equal with men as far as human personhood is concerned. There is no distinction of high and low or between man and woman. The soul in both is the same. The two lives the same live have the same feelings, as each essentially complements the other.
Commenting in this regard, Theresa Okure maintains: “What has been tagged a woman’s issue is in effect a humanity issue. To the extent that women are treated as inferior to men, to that extent is humanity itself degraded, deprived and oppressed.”
Counter Arguments:
Some people consider the women movement and its arguments with understanding sympathy. A great many others, including both men and women, have viewed the development as ugly and with alarm. They summarize the movement as that which has earned the notoriety of becoming imperialism, a social dogma whose salutary worth is unmistakably taken for granted. According to Alice Von Hildebrand, this movement has pathetically turned contemporary female mentality to detest pregnancy, maternity, matrimony, the kitchen and the head tie as enemies to female progress.
Unfortunately, this move cannot be accepted, say opponents. Given its ubiquitous expression of godlessness that abounds our age to name a few: high rate of suicide, contraception, sterilization, euthanasia, abortion, prostitution, the sentry and the control of the third world bedrooms by western population control mechanism and diplomatic cruelty. The tragedy then becomes an unrestricted anxiety among women to join the bandwagon of patronizing and advancing such perfidies.
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Henry Ekwuruke
Henry Ekwuruke is Executive Director of the Development Generation Africa International.
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