Most of the time I thank God for being born a male. It’s this mentality that when let out for the other gender to hear, triggers an outcry of male chauvinism in many societies, numerous movements formed supposedly to fight the ‘male ego’ that they usually claim to be targeting them. To some extent this is true; men despising women and always ready with ‘facts’ and scriptures to justify their actions, but somewhere along the way the fundamental objective is blown away by the wind of hatred and competition emanating from the women.
Always there to bear the brunt is the boy child in the society. They are considered privileged and elevated from their female counterparts especially when we look back at many of our societies. Boys were truly favoured compared to women since they were supposed to carry on the legacy of their fathers and take care of their paternal homes as opposed to girls who were to be married away, but they (boys) too have similar problems to contend with in today’s changing lifestyle therefore ignoring them just because they were historically preferred, is the biggest injustice I believe there is.
Most African governments are accused of neglecting gender equity and empowerment of the girl child. The governments surrounded by guilt, start creating numerous unnecessary support for the women so that they are cast to others in good light but the problem never goes away, this shows that the problem is never the problem but a creation of non-issues by ourselves.
Women will find it easy to hide behind historical injustices. Women are known for their resilience and if they could just channel this precious virtue towards appropriate goals, then they won’t be blaming anyone. The world is a free ‘market’ where contention with other players in the sector defines one’s success or failure, male or female.
The women and proponents of gender equity should realize that depending on history for freebies is an idea passed with time and will only lag them behind in the achievement of this much touted issue. All they should spend all their time on if at all they need to is empowerment and encouragement of the presumably disoriented women and girls to take on their male counterparts in fighting it out with life. The soul reason of having your life is living it failure to which you bear the responsibility alone, with no one anywhere to blame. There is a lot of sense in this saying- a man (referring to the whole mankind) is in charge of his own destiny. Make it count.