The Gender Imbalance
The Independent
NEWS
August 12, 2002
Posted to the web August 13, 2002
Banjul
Gambian women seem to be at the wrong side of everything. When it was time
to launch a puritanical campaign against immorality to please God and coax
him into opening the skies to end the state of semi-drought, men turned to
women in the streets and beat them unconscious. A few months ago, when the
urge was felt to clamp down on prostitution, women suffered beatings,
arrests and detention as the blame was heaped on them.
The fact is that men should be honest to themselves and review the
behaviour towards their wives, sisters, and other female members of the
society. The recent report from the Women's Bureau pointing to a sad
scenario of gender violence, indicates just how deep-seated stereotypes
are, giving unjustified advantages to men over women in almost all aspects
of life. Men are made to be comfortable with promiscuity, while those on
the other side of the fence are not.
Beatings, battery, rape, forced marriages and the perception of women as
second-fiddles is the anti-thesis to the government's declared drive to put
girls and by extension women at par with boys and men. The Independent
reported an incident in which a woman was the victim of gang rape in
Kunkujang a month earlier. Seven strong men took advantage of her physical,
psychological, social and cultural weakness and forced themselves on her.
The most disgusting thing was that nothing came out of it. The men are now
allowed to walk the streets with an unperturbed conscience. She is left to
nurse her pain and anguish - physical and psychological. This is
discrimination, slavery and savage dominance.
Something is not quite right in the way women are made to feel inferior to
the opposite sex even though they may be more intelligent, more determined,
more serious and even more capable than the men who are born to assert
dominance as their birthright. Obviously something seems to be out of place
when girls with all rights to be in school to compete with boys are told to
stay at home or go to the farm or are hastily packed into forced marriages
that are really manifest a lopsided interest. Something is grossly wrong in
holding girls as commodities to be disposed of whenever the highest bidder
appears. As for mothers, they are the by-products of generations of
brainwashing before them would have learnt to be subservient and obsequious
to her husband. A good wife she would always live to remember from the day
when she was being married off is the one who does not question his
husband's decisions.
Something is definitely when such girls grow into adults to live very poor
lives where their interests make up the back row of priorities for her
husband. Something is serious deficient in the whole socio-cultural system,
which preserve these stereotypes and ensure that from generation to
generation girls and women can be even abused by men without really having
the chance complain. Sometimes religion is wrongfully employed as a means
of beating some unusually stubborn women to submission.
Something awry needs to be put right when intelligent, literate and capable
women are bypassed for unintelligent, incapable and lazy men to man
important positions. How many women make it to offices? Check the National
Assembly, which only the presence of about five to six women prevents from
being an Assembly for men instead of an Assembly for the nation. In fact
who can deny that this national institution is quite in effect operating as
a traditional male stronghold. Check the number of people serving as
ministers under Yahya Jammeh's leadership. Check the schools and calculate
the ratio of girls to boys. They are under-represented everywhere. The
voice of the few who have the energy, expertise and determination to speak
out against the exploitation of women, always recoil into a hollow din
because there is gender stereotype everywhere. We must stop paying lip-
service to the cause of ending the plight of the Gambian woman. Gambian men
be they in homes, offices and in the streets should be honest with
themselves by giving women what is rightly theirs. We must stop acting as
if we are doing women a favour by giving them the platform to state their
case.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
