YWLI recently carried out an Essay competition for primary and secondary school students. The essay for the Secondary schools was to start ’As a boy/girl I want to live my life my way but …’ The primary schools were to argue that ’Life is easier for boys than for girls ‘(and vice versa)”. The essay aimed at giving the students a chance to voice some of the issues and challenges they felt they were facing as a result of their gender and sex and bring out some of the stereo types that they may believe or that they have heard about the opposite sex.
Marking the essays was more tasking and involving than I or any of the assessors had imagined. The students submitted 245 essays that brought out a lot of issues and raised concerns on their general out look to issues around sex, gender and gender roles as out lined by the society. However, the exercise was also an eye opener although we had to keep out composure we were so shocked by some of the essays and realized the notions that boys and girls have. It was of keen interest to note the level of gender stereotypes and more so to see the views that boys hold. In some essays, some 15year old boys referred to girls and women as “Blood sucking vampires who are out to gold dig from men and use them” or “Girls should resign themselves to house hold chores because they are good at cutting vegetables and changing soaked diapers.”
The boys in this case, considering their role to that of a provider. They feel that they are obliged to provide for their families if they are real men. This often causes frustration especially when they are not able to match up and leads to conflict within the home because he feels less masculine. The girls and women are meant to be provided for and should have no independence especially when it comes to financial matters. This has led the girls not to set clear goals or ambitions for themselves since they believe their place is either at home waiting on their husbands or selling veggies on the road side. It is dangerous in this day and age for any one person to depend solely on their spouse. The young women must be encouraged to realize their dreams and should have no apologies no matter how far fetched they may be.
It was worth to note that many of the girls too believed that girls are not their sister’s keepers and that they are resigned to a life of prostitution, cooking, cleaning and child birth. This is just a glimpse of what the essays portrayed and it was evident that there are a lot of negative notions on gender and on masculinities that need to be looked into if we intend to ensure equality and gain support from the men and boys in the society.
It is evident that these young boys and girls have certain notions and myths around gender roles that have an impact on how they perceive the opposite sex and the role they feel that sex should play in the society. Deep rooted Culture has proven not only to be for the old but passed on from one generation to the other. I do agree that there are some cultural practices that stood to empower the woman but many did quite the opposite and those are the ones fresh in these young people’s minds.
Are we fighting a loosing battle? I feel this fight cannot be fought by girls and women alone. This battle also belongs to the boys and the young men for they are the ones who grow up to become rapists, batterers and chauvinists. The young men need to truly understand this plight for the girl child and for women’s empowerment not as a battle to find the greater sex but as union to give their mothers, sisters, friends and girls friends a fair and equal chance in life.
Flawed masculinities may seem far off and not many people understand what it means yet they live it and hear it in their day to day lives. It encompasses many actions and attitudes that men and boys have since they been socialized that to be a ‘real man’ one has to do/ not do certain things. It involves men believing they are the sole providers and hence getting violent when they can not do so in the current economic hardships, which makes them feel less ‘masculine’. It is about men whistling and making nasty comments as a woman/ girl pass by, its about women being ordered by their leaders to duly serve her husband and respect him regardless of the situation since this ‘is what our culture expects of men/women’. All these have elements of negative masculinities masked innocence/ignorance.
The boy and the man...
It is sad to note the kind of attitudes that boys have and the gender identity aspect. Some postive aspect of what a man and a woman were supposed to do have been overtaken by the modernisation hence when men dont realise that for example they can not provide and protect their families 100% then trouble starts. It is even more sad to note that some boys believe they are supposed to grow up to protet and provide for women and as such they have to be better in all ways than girls. A friend of mine who is a mother to two boys was sharing how the son was stressed up for coming second in class....to a girl!!! the poor kid who was in the very first classes in primary school had never imagined that a girl can be better than a boy and so even though he was bright, it was okay when another boy defeated him, but a girl!!!! If such a boy doesnt get the right guidance he is likely to be violent to any girl to prove he is best. The honours then fall on the primary socialisation agents, the family to shape up the boy and girl for tomorrow's man and woman. it is a great task! The kind of attitudes that men have are very much replicated in the boys who copy their role models. The other day, in a humourous tone ( hopefully) in one of the local TV series, a boy in school shook his finger at the teacher ( deputy head teacher) and pointed out that " Where I come from women don't shout back at men", Yes the man in the teenage boy!!! In as much this is comedy the scenario is real in real life. There is a lot to be done, each day, a step at a time.