The
pitfalls of our national gender equality consciousness.*
It is a given in
democratic societies, or at least those that aspire to be so, that all men and
women are treated and respected as equal citizens with an equal enjoyment of
human rights, protection of the law, social welfare and social and economic
justice.
In Zimbabwe’s case we
generally do not have a celebrated democratic record of actively seeking to promote equal opportunities
between our male and female citizens. This is not to argue that our liberation
struggle or post independence government
or its attendant institutions
have deliberately ignored gender equality, but that, thus far, they have not done enough. However it is also not meant to imply that once we have a female deputy President or deputy Prime Minister, as is the case in Zimbabwe,we have arrived at gender equality.
Moreover, the recent and
ongoing case of alleged ‘female rapists’ (with an alleged male accomplice) do
make one pause for thought on the matter.
Put together with statements wrongly attributed to a female cabinet minister, but said by a national leader of a political party's women's assembly, concerning a rather
political but distasteful request that males withdraw sexual services to their
female counterparts if they refuse to register to vote it becomes important
that the matter be debated and reassessed.
This is because both
incidents indicate that it is continual importance that the country re-examines
the issue of gender and gender equality much more holistically and with a
greater sense of urgency.
It is however the
case of the alleged ‘female rapists’ that is particularly telling. This is because there has been a lot of public
debate on the same said case, and it has become a bit of a phenomenon
particularly on the basis that it is generally difficult for many Zimbabweans
to imagine women as not only able to allegedly ‘rape’ men and collect their
victims’ semen, but to do so serially and in allegedly criminally daring
circumstances.
The public debate in response to this much publicized case has however
been very speculative as to what may cause such behavior by anyone,
particularly if they are female.
One of the popular reasons
given is that the alleged perpetrators of such an act are involved in acts that
are related to witchcraft and other superstitious assumptions of a co-relation between reproductive fluids
and the acquisition of wealth in small-scale businesses such as cross border
trading. For students of sociology this reason would be a gem of a case study
for a doctorate.
For the majority of
Zimbabwean women this speculative reason
should trigger serious cause for
concern, primarily because it indicates the continued economic troubles that
women face in the country and the now even more general but false assumption
that ‘rape’ by women is now as much a danger to society as that done by men.
As has been written
before by some of our own renowned academics and writers (Mcfadden, Gaidzanwa, Dangarembga, Nyamfukudza, Marechera, Mungoshi
and others), we have tended to treat the male gender more preferentially than the
female one. This is both in relation to societal (political and economic) status as well as basic living standards
(education, access to health, social lifestyles). And the explanations of the
broad disadvantage of the post independence Zimbabwean female in our society have
been evidenced not only via well researched reports by local and international
non-governmental organizations.
It was also to be
publicly found in the activism that was spawned by the University of Zimbabwe
female students who protested in the late 1980s against the sexual harassment of
one of their own by their fellow male student colleagues and in part, the then ‘emergency
taxi’ operators.
All of these brave,
but at that time limited in national scope, interventions by activists,
students and organizations in pursuit of gender equality saw the advent of the
coming into political understanding of the ‘equal’ Zimbabwean
female. By ‘equal’, I would be referring
to the female who would eventually come to embrace the globally accepted
understanding of equality between men and women not just as citizens who share
the right to vote but as individuals with the right to lead their lives with
equal and undemocratically unmitigated access to the state and the equal
enjoyment of universally accepted and accorded human rights.
This level of
consciousness and interaction on matters related to gender equality has
contributed significantly to contemporary progressive discourse on issues of pursuing
societal, legal and political parity between men and women. It has however not
been as successful in changing the lot of a majority of Zimbabwean women for
the better.
And the examples to
show for this are many. They include issues to do with our still undemocratic components
of our inheritance law, lack of affirmative action in education, inadequate access
to medical treatment (not only for maternal health), unemployment and the very
real ‘glass ceiling’ in various professions and corporate institutions.
The social effects of
these continuing challenges have been the hidden cultural coercion of women
into early marriages, lack of higher levels of education among young females,
commercial sex work, and of late, the involvement of young women in what can
only be considered ‘superstitious’ assumptions around sex and sexual fluids in
relation to the acquisition of wealth.
All in all, these
issues point to the truth there is a new vulnerability of the female Zimbabwean
citizen in a society that is struggling
to emerge from a catastrophic economic crisis between 2000 to present day . It
is a ‘vulnerability’ that can no longer addressed in relation to focusing only
on maternal or reproductive health but all aspects that relate to the broad aspirations
of Zimbabwe’s women.
It must now be part
of the complete national agenda and the root causes must be identified without quick
and easy recourse to merely addressing the symptoms. And these root causes reside
in a society that due to the ravages of our economic and political crisis, we
have forgotten the commonly held democratic principle that men and women are
equals in our society.
It is therefore
necessary that we all start a new conversation on gender equality. One that is characterized
by knowledge of the necessity of expanding state/societal assistance to women
not only in matters relating to reproductive health but also to issues of a
social welfare grant for them, access to education, tackling the ‘glass ceiling’,
improving rural livelihoods through the provision of water, expanding state and
local council clinic medical services and ensuring adequate nutrition to vulnerable
female headed households, establishing democratic marriage laws and stemming
the causes that have been leading more women into commercial sex work.
* The title for this blog is adapted from Franz Fanon's phenomenal chapter 'The Pitfalls of National Consciousness' in the Wretched of the Earth.
^ If you decide to use this blog please acknowledge that you got the original version from takura-zhangazha.blogpost.com
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