International Women’s Day – Some Contentious Thoughts
We are at a juncture where women are making themselves known as equal humans requiring equal dignity, opportunity and returns.
She “ceased to be a little girl” and “at once stepped into the post of mother, called in the village
doctor, gave the patient his pills at the proper intervals, sat up all night by his pillow, cooked
his gruel and nursed him back to health”. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Postmaster
doctor, gave the patient his pills at the proper intervals, sat up all night by his pillow, cooked
his gruel and nursed him back to health”. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Postmaster
( March 8, 2018, Montreal, Sri Lanka Guardian) On March 8th every year we mark International Women’s day. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”. This year we mark the day with good news and bad news. First, the good news. A newly released UNICEF report says that child marriages are declining, with the largest drop in South Asia, according to UNICEF. A decade ago, a South Asian girl below the age of 18 was threatened with a 50% chance of getting married off, some as young as 13 years of age. Today, that figure has dropped to 30% – still a long way to go – nonetheless we have made some progress. The bad news is that in February this year, the dreaded Islamist militant group Boko Haram group in Nigeria attacked the village of Dapchi with machine guns, targeting the Government Girls Science and Technical School and kidnapped more than a hundred girls from their dormitory. A Nigerian government spokesperson said there were still as many as 50 girls missing.
It will be recalled that in 2014, the same group abducted many girls from the north-east Nigerian town of Chibok. Of the 276 girls kidnapped, more than 100 girls are still missing.
Then there is the emerging news of odious conduct of males toward females in the “civilized” world. Many powerful figures are coming out of the woodwork – apparently perceived up to now as “respectable” – accused of abusing women over which they wield power. The above mentioned are nothing but stories of exploitation of vulnerable women: by men. Over the years, women have tried to overcome not only sexual abuse by predators, but inequality at work and pay and general indignity. As Arundhati Roy says: “Many people have fought long and remarkable battles to create the freedoms we have. How can we concede those spaces? How can we think that some natural phenomenon has gifted us these freedoms? No! They have been wrested, one by one”. This statement is reminiscent of a statement by Dr. Sadashiv Pawar, who says in his article The Portrayal of Women and Social Oppression in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Postmaster and The Conclusion: “Tagore reveals the unequal social structure that oppresses women, on another, he creates courageous women who challenge tradition”. Tagore wrote about social inequality focusing on the role of women in the late 19th and early 20t century. The kind that Arundhati Roy says achieved much for women.
We are at a juncture where women are making themselves known as equal humans requiring equal dignity, opportunity and returns. As Frances McDormand – winner at this year’s Oscars – for the best actress in a leading role said: “we all have stories to tell” subsuming her message in two words: “inclusion rider”. Inclusion rider is a stipulation that actors and actresses can ask (or demand) to have inserted into their contracts, which would require a certain level of diversity among a film’s cast and crew.
Simply put, women are fighting for gender equality and freedom from abuse, manipulation and discrimination. The United Nations says: “today, gender inequality is rife: 1 in 3 women experience violence in their lifetime; 830 women die every day from preventable pregnancy-related causes; and only 1 in 4 parliamentarians worldwide are women. It will be 2086 before we close the gender pay gap if present trends continue with no action”. UN Women Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said: “We know that healthy societies include a wide mix of voices, yet millions of women around the world are being silenced and their potential cramped. The current solidarity movements must be a tipping point for accountability; an end to impunity and the cyclical poverty of women in both rural and urban areas. Lively political activism from both men and women must target change for those who need it most”.
Here’s my take.
The operative words of the Executive Director’s message are “women around the world are being silenced and their potential cramped”. The issue here is “who is cramping women’s potential and silencing them?” Richard Wrangham and Dale Person in their book Demonic Males say: “In September 1980 the world’s largest captive colony of chimpanzees consisted of four adult males and nine adult females at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands. They shared a big island, had excellent care and lots of food. But even so, their social life was far from relaxed. Just like chimpanzees in the wild, the males fought to be number one. In a cycle that had been going on for at least four years, each of the three top males had already been the alpha at least once, and each had been deposed after the other two ganged up against him.”
It doesn’t take much for one to conclude that chimpanzee politics is very much alive in the human world today. The authors go on: “sexual selection, the evolutionary process that produces sex differences, has a lot to answer for. Without it, males wouldn’t possess dangerous bodily weapons and a mindset that sanctions violence…”
Now let us turn to women. Simone de Beauvoir, in her book The Second Sex inquires what is a woman? and quotes one commentator who answers: Tota mulier in utero (woman is a womb). This of course is a ludicrous misconception which is like saying “man is a penis”. These are both equipment of the female and male respectively and should by no means define them.
Yuval Noah Hariri in his celebrated and much acclaimed book Sapiens, dispels the myth that men wield more power because they are physically stronger and have dominated women over centuries of time. Hariri says “For example, men often simply aren’t stronger, and women are often more resistant to hunger, fatigue and disease. Also, weedy politicians boss beefy cleaners and barmen around the House of Commons – physical strength is in fact very rarely related to social power. Women are often stereotyped as better manipulators and appeasers than men and are famed for their superior ability to see things from the perspective of others,” suggesting that women have the innate ability to be leaders and bosses.
Hariri also dispels the myth that women loose out because they have to invest time to bring up children: “being the main caretaker means that you have more incentive to forge ties with other people, that you are more concerned to insure social harmony and adequate food-supply, and that you have more to lose from wars and plagues. Arguably, a mother of three should therefore be far more interested in politics than a carefree male bachelor”.
“We are used to the separation of the political sphere from “domestic” issues, but this is a result of patriarchy. It is not a law of nature that such a separation must exist. In bonobo society, for example, bonobo females are also the main caretakers of children, yet precisely because of that, they are politically dominant.”
I agree with Tagore, Hariri and Roy and believe that women have achieved much and are beginning to realize their equality and immense potential. To women like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Emma Watson and Priyanka Chopra the word “feminism” is not against men but against women, as it creates a mindset that institutionalises inequality and calls for equality. Women have always been equal. It is now for up to them to change the mistaken bar room mindset of the virile testosterone ridden male. They have the courage to do it.
