To be female and to be woman

To be female and to be woman

Studying social sciences has enlightened me profoundly about my society, and especially about myself. Perhaps this explains why I re-visited my beliefs about women. What the majority of global society believes about women is a series of myths. Women live in a society where the body ‘limits’ them the minute they are born. The sex of the baby is often the first question asked when it is born. At that very minute, attitudes and perspectives about the baby’s future vary according to their gender.

Unfortunately, for the female sex we are made to believe – directly and indirectly – that we are in a physical structure that restricts us and allocates us by default to our destiny. Perhaps experience of sexism at such a young age accounts for generations and generations of women accepting their socially constructed inferiority and living harmoniously with it. It is a phenomenon that both men and women internalize. It is not a fight against men but one against an ideology that disadvantages an entire female species.

We are born pure without any knowledge of sex and gender difference. It is society, religion, customs, tradition, culture and family that begin to shape our mentality and our perspectives. At the end of the day we are equipped with an internal weapon to reduce ourselves to so much less than we have the potential to be. The struggle for the emancipation and liberation of women is not only against external sexism but also against what women have been made to believe about themselves.

In my country there have been many struggles related to biology. This type of struggle differs as it requires that in order for the woman to regain her freedom to be whatever she chooses to be, individually in her own home, she needs to stand up against the sexist notions of loved ones, partners, mothers, fathers, in-laws, peers. What is the point of liberating the woman in the workplace if our homes are still raising girls who do not believe that for them too, the sky is the limit? That they have equal rights to men!

The argument about the emancipation of women has somewhat shifted to education and employment equity alone and only tangentially touches on the dimensions of the home. This is where gender inequality and sexism are strongest. Sexism and gender prejudice are phenomena that came long before the education and employment of women. It seems that sexism and the patriarchal ownership of the woman’s body limits the woman and hinders her from becoming fully human, just because she is woman.

My internal evaluation got me thinking. What is it going to take for our global men to fight the battle against sexism and contribute to the downfall of patriarchy? For them to actively acknowledge that oppression and prejudice by race is similar to oppression and prejudice by gender. That it should be done away with. I pray that our daughters will be fighting for a different form of liberation. That – like the Apartheid pass-laws – we can also do away with patriarchy and sexism. I argue this, fully aware that struggle is called such because it is not without its opposition. Emancipation and liberation of women can only contribute to the development of families, communities, nations and continents.  The plea is to free the female mind, held hostage by sexist ideologies. If it means abandoning and changing long-practiced norms that our ancestors were firmly attached to, then let it be so. Yes we value history and respect it, but we are not ancestors. We are people in the 21^st century!

Fezani Khumalo