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Women’s cause has made great strides but misogyny and sexism remain

Thursday March 15 2018
women

Arguably, the women’s cause has made great strides over the years. However, misogyny and sexism remain rampant and they make the advances women have made over the years seem like tokenism. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGAH | NMG

By CHAACHA MWITA

I have had the misfortune of losing the two most important women in my life — one, my mother Selina Kibiro; the other my wife Eunice Anyonje.

The first loss in 1993 matured me faster than is natural for, being the “firstborn,” certain responsibilities I wouldn’t have thought about for many years thence, suddenly and swiftly fell on my laps. The second loss in 2015 aged me better than time.

Perhaps because I was not expected to survive childbirth, my mother loved me in a special way. She’d had two stillbirths before me and, although her faith in getting a live child ran high, her close relatives had given up on her and baptised her “an empty seed pod.” My birth changed that and my mother smothered me with love.

After two sons, she started craving for a daughter. She was not to get one until much later. So, I was her “daughter” as well as her son for as long as I can remember. For instance, thanks to her, there’s no “girl” household chore I cannot perform.

When I related this story to my wife during our courtship days, she said: “You couldn’t have died; I’d been waiting for you.” And on seeing my mother’s photo upon request, she said: “She wouldn’t have let you die a third time.” Only women have the genius to say such wonderful and original things.

This early and lifelong dalliance with refined femininity makes me cringe each time I smell a whiff of prejudice against women.

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I know misogyny when I see it, and I know sexism when it presents itself. And I cannot stand both. In fact, I was once forced to “educate” a senior colleague when he implied that promoting a woman to a certain role was wrong as she would be required to work odd hours blah, blah, blah.

He looked at me in shock and asked: “You mean you take these things that seriously?” I told him: “The hell I do!”

Arguably, the women’s cause has made great strides over the years. We see more women in leadership positions than before, partly due to progressive constitutionalism; more women are paid as well as men for the same type of jobs; and maternity benefits and protections are quite good in some institutions. And the story continues.

However, misogyny and sexism remain rampant and they make the advances women have made over the years seem like tokenism — constitutional or otherwise. I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of jokes that are denigrating to women on social media.

Of course the modern culture of sexualising women does not help, but one would think that insulting women on social media is not the best way to spend one’s time. On WhatsApp groups, if I sense, even remotely, that a message or joke is misogynistic or sexist, I delete it without reading it.

The problem goes beyond social media. Recently, I was training a group of young journalists and the question of what radio stations they listened to arose. Out of a sense of professorial obligation, I tuned in to all the stations cited.

Most of what I heard was caveman drivel against women — using the choicest epithets. Relationships go wrong, blame the woman; couples fail to conceive, blame the woman; a man gets late for work, blame the woman; children get maladjusted, blame the woman. Where are the men?

The woman was God’s finest creation. You need a crude prototype to make the refined product. Adam was the crude; Eve was the refinement. I know this because I was borne of a great woman who brought me up to respect and appreciate women, and I was married to a great big-hearted woman who took a chance on me, helped me care for my younger siblings, and took on my brother’s children when he passed away with his wife in a freak accident in 2014.

Imagine how many people would have been hopeless if these two women had not come into this world! Misogyny and sexism against any woman, is hatred and prejudice against every good that these women represented. No real man should stand for it.

I am trying my best to bring up my daughters to be great women worthy of their grandmother’s and mother’s legacies. And my sons too.

Chaacha Mwita is a former journalist who now prefers to be known as an ordinary citizen.

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