We Were Girls in one World, We Are Women In Another (500)
From the day a
little girl discovers that she is a girl -which
distinguishes her from everybody else- she knows that she is different. She has female attributes so she is bound to be a girl who will grow up to be a woman.
As a girl child, moving from one corner of a kitchen to another, bumping into your mothers hips and tripping over her feet, was almost all you could . That was how we bonded with the women in our lives. It was also trying to find attributes -identify with who we would be when we grew up- and try to break the thin line that always seemed to be there to make girlhood and
womanhood seem like the north and the south poles.
Trying to find our domestic selves -as soothing as it was- also meant a limitation. We couldn't run around the yard playing cops antil we gasped for breath, as our brothers did. We couldn't climb up ans down trees until we broke a limb -just looking after little birdies and putting up nests. Having been living a somehow restricted life, we started to resent that we had to be girls. It was not -and still isn't- in a childs vibrant and creative nature to be able to identify a resemblance with an almost idle life of a woman, as it was before.
As grown women now, we are being exposed to a life of independence. This does pose a challenge for us as, the life we are supposed to live now retracts from the way we have been brought up. We have been reared by women that were robbed of their livelihood, having been
taught that should be servile an completely dependant upon men.
The times are changing, the tide has turned. But, how do we keep up with the continually changing times? How do we cross the bridge from the life of resentment and self degradation, to embrasing our womanhood and claimign our crucial position in this country and in life? Women are now standing up for themselves, still tending their households and their husbands, an streching their capabilities to the limits. It still remains though, how do we escape what our childhood has taught us. That the role of a woman in home, and outside, is merely to be menial. That a woman can not be woman enough without reliance to a man.
Now has come a time to rebuild our intellectual development and be content with just being a woman; whether we are successful business women, housewives or domestic workers. We have for so long been trodden on -not by men- but by our own perception of ourselves and our role as women. It is time we realised that launching a war upon men is futile if we do not take pride in our femininity and womanhood. It is time we stopped wishing our lives away and comparing ourselves to the male species, instead of just living it. It is time we fit into our shoes and walked tall as women 'the backbone of this nation'.
N Ayanda Mkhize,copyright 2005