Depression American Sweetheart
Depression American Sweetheart
Gender discrimination based on sex
Abstract
While growing up, Raliat was the most submissive and tolerant girl I knew in the neighborhood.
For instance, we used to share a vey small cubicle of a room with our two brothers and a male cousin. The boys slept on a mat while we slept on another. Yet, when It was clearly obvious that it was the boys that wetted the other mat, Raliat would offer and always did spread it for them. Then, she would scrub and clean up the room after them. I always used to insist they did it all themselves, but her reply used to be :
‘how do you think they would feel if everyone saw them spreading their mats?'
And I would ask:
‘What about you?, don't you care that people would think you wetted the mas?'
She would shrug her shoulders and reply,
‘ I'm only a girl, they will be mocked as boys'.
That was how different she saw our roles in the society. When our parents died, we were only fifteen years old, so an uncle from the city volunteered to take us with him. My sister declined, and opted to marry her junior school sweetheart. I simply couldn't understand her thought process. Clearly, she was the night while I was the day!
Despite my repeated pleadings , she got married two years later while I went off to college. I remember when I wrote her that I was studying law, she replied and said,
‘just keep your eyes open and not only on books, Suliat, because we will end up in the kitchen anyways' that was the opinion she had of our roles as women.
For six years, Raliat tried to have a baby. Her in-laws were convinced it was impossible but her husband stood by her. After the sixth year, she couldn't take the ‘shame' any longer, she married a younger woman for her husband (woman to woman marriage) by paying her bride price. Although considered contrary to public policy,[1] is a settled practice where I come from. Within a space of three years, the second wife had two children. Though happy for her husband, my sister was extremely depressed. She once wrote to me and described herself as ‘an empty nut'.
Finally, after nine years into the marriage, my twin became pregnant. I was then in the North serving my father land (NYSC). Eight months later, she went into a premature labor in the dead of the night. Raliat chose the second day of the Oro festival. Unfortunately, the mid-wife (also a woman) could not be contacted. Her husband (a welder) became the mid-wife because she couldn't be taken out to the hospital mainly because it is an abomination for a woman to see the Oro.
She had a beautiful set of twins alright, but before the next morning, she had given up the ghost.
My twin sister bled to death because of a custom I personally consider to be barbaric and archaic.
INTRODUCTION
To me, gender stereotype is visible everyday and every where because it is how I am privileged in this culture. This is due to the existence of Patriarchy, the prevailing religion of the planet. Where I come from, the males are blind to these factors simply because he has conditioned his mind to use himself as a yardstick for determining what is ‘normal', ‘acceptable' way of living. It is a system whereby the female is everywhere subsumed under the male. For instance, if a decision is to be made due to inadequate resources, male children are often preferred to their female counterparts and are more likely to be sent to schools, while the women are relegated to the domestic world.
Gender has always and I fear to admit , will always remain a hot topic of debate such as religion, sport and politics, if and only if, we don't turn the word ‘right side up' as stated by ‘Sojourner Truth (1) in1851 in Akron, Ohio when she delivered her famous speech "Ain't I a woman?", at a convention on women's right. She was reported to have taken up the defense of mother Eve so superbly by saying:
"if de Fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world Upside down all alone, dese women ought to be able to turn it back and get right side up again!"
That is how much influence the female gender could be as an instrument of change on the issue of gender discrimination.
Gender discrimination was perhaps given an empirical status through research in psychology which in turn can be traced to the functionalist school of the late 1800s, which held that men and women differ in ability and personality. It developed further through psychoanalysis to hold the view that differences in anatomy produce personality differences in women and men, with women being inferior in a number of important ways. This has been seen not to be so true in plethora of cases. If women are not confined to certain roles, allowed to exercise their ‘muscles' in the society, and also given the same managerial opportunities for instance, in an organization, they are more likely to perform just as good as their male counterparts or even better, because they are more sensitive to vital issues that deals with building healthy working relationships and they have the natural instincts to be able to detect when things are about to go wrong. What more, a woman is a natural reconciliatory if she wants to be and she can help oil the machineries of a working relationship to help it go smoother.
CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION.
- Gender stereotype.
These consists of beliefs about the psychological traits and characteristics as well as the activities appropriate to men and women. They include beliefs and attitudes about masculinity and femininity.
- Gender Roles.
Robert Brannon (2) traced the word ‘role' back to the terminology of the theater. It was French for ‘roll' referring to the roll of paper on which an actor's part was printed. It is particularly meaningful if we consider that the role or the part a person plays differs from the person. Therefore, the male gender role or the female gender role is like a script that men and women follow to fulfill their appropriate parts in acting masculine or feminine.
Gender roles are defined by behaviors and they consists of activities that men and women engage in with different frequencies. However, when people associate a pattern of behavior with either women or men (gender roles) , they may overlook the individual variations and come to believe that the behavior is inevitably associated with one gender but not the other, hence gender roles can become gender stereotypes.
- Rights
What is a right? Derived from the Latin word ‘rectus', it means correct, straight as opposed to a wrong. It connotes to stand in accord with law, morality and justice. It is a well founded and acknowledged claim enforceable by the power of the state. A thing is therefore not a right until the state has begotten it by legislative process.
- Customs
This represents what the people do and generally accept as having the effect of law (3). They are norms of moral conduct which reflects the ‘Volksgeist' (4) of a people and evolves through their own peculiar usages and practices. They are things people do or things people always do in a particular way.
- Discrimination.
This is the different treatment of others based solely on their membership in a society distinct group or category, such as race, ethnicity, sex, religion, age or disability. (5)
In our context, we would be talking about discrimination based on sex with particular reference to the infringement of the female's freedom of movement particularly amongst the Yoruba people of western Nigeria as a case study.
Gender Roles of a woman.
In most societies, the attributes of a ‘true' woman whereby she is judged and she judges herself are the same. They are the four cardinal virtues- piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity.
Without these virtues, it is believed that no woman's life could have a real meaning.
These cardinal virtues have been formed from religion. Religious studies have been seen to be compatible with femininity. Even traditional worshippers all over the world find these virtues a necessity for complete womanhood.
Men could be equally religious but not naturally as virtuous. For example, men are allowed to be prone to sin and seduction and what more, largely due to a woman's lack of purity!
Submissiveness is a desirable and necessary virtue in women, while it is totally not manly. Women in most society long to have a strong, courageous, older, wise and forceful men. Women are not allowed to question a man's authority.
Lastly, most societies believe a woman's place was uniquely by her own fire side. Like Raliat, most women think the domestic duties expected from them are cooking, nursing, cleaning e.t.c. most Nigerian women who passes these cardinal virtues' test are considered to be true women.
In the rural areas where there are few or no indicators pointing out women's rights or what they should expect from life, they simply submit to the dictates of the society. They believe domesticity could be learned and practiced , purity is attainable, piety, mastered and submissiveness should be a second nature.
Question however is: who are the people who constitute the society? What is the yardstick for determining a normal, acceptable what of living? If biological, does it mean that these cardinal virtues cannot be gleaned from a male physiology and therefore mastered? If natural, does natural law connote selection and distribution of gender roles to culminate into gender stereotype? These and more are burning issues that have found expression through centuries from the times of Christine de Pisan (6) to Emmeline Pankhurst (7) to Sojourner Truth (8) to Germaine Greer (9) to Gloria Steinem (10) and still through this tiny but strong voice of mine.
A leading feminist of the Age of enlightenment once said:
‘I am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed and their powers of digestion destroyed. To carry the remark still further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true, they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members of the society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reason."Educate women like men" says Rousseau, "and the more they resemble our sex, the less power will they have over us". This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves…'
Mary Wollstonecraft- A Vindication Of the Rights of Woman (11)
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT;THE NIGERIAN POSITION.
Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely in Nigeria and reside in any part thereof or exit there from. Even during emergency periods, these rights still subsist, though limited to recognized public interest. A question that arises there from is ‘what is recognized public interest?' can the restriction on the movement of women come under the purview of recognized public interest?
The right to freedom of movement as entrenched in s41(1) of the constitution (12) cannot be restricted unless by law and the provision of the constitution. Custom does not therefore restrict this fundamental right, a right which is inalienable. The equality of both men and women is an incident of his humanity. Women too are human, hence, the awareness of ‘personhood' makes her fight back against any constraint upon her humanity and freedom. As an independent being, she is a complete whole, not part of any other being (e.g. man) nor inferior to any other man in the essentials of her nature. The battle cry all along has been and still is equality as a right and not as a privilege.
THE ORO FESTIVAL.
Chief Babajide, the head of traditional masquerade in Isheri, Lagos state, described the Oro festival as ‘an annual rite to appease the god for protection, child bearing and peace of the town.' (13)
Oro is usually practiced in the western parts of Nigeria. Oro is know by a whirring noise and as soon as this is heard, all women must shut themselves up in their houses and refrain from looking out based on the fear of being punished or even killed. The sound is being made with an instrument known as the ‘bull roarer' in English. women are totally forbidden from seeing or witnessing the festival as it is a Men's secret association. It usually takes place in the night, though some brazen groups bring out the Oro at broad day light!
Some believe that it is carried out by naked men, hence the restriction, but others believe it is the gods themselves who come down to clean up the land . whatever the case is, it is a great infringement on the freedom of movement of the Nigerian woman and it is a discriminatory practice when considered in light of Section 1 of the CEDAW (14).
One Mrs. Titilayo Benson, a courageous woman in Lagos dared to question its legality by taking the Lagos state government, the Oba of Ikorodu and his council of chiefs to court. (15).
Like Raliat, thousands of people through history would have suffered from such infringement of a fundamental right due to the Oro festival.
Our rights are therefore still being sacrificed at the altar of custom. It should be noted that customary laws are distinguished from bare customs which do not have the force of law and are therefore
neither binding nor enforceable. In the southern parts of Nigeria, there is the saying which vividly illustrates the non-law quality of these customs especially with regards to masquerades festivals that:
‘ if a man invites the general public to the celebration of the masquerade of his ancestors and fails to fulfill his self-imposed obligation on the appointed day, i.e, fails to celebrate the festival, no one can coerce him to do so, and there is no sanction for his failure'. (16)
In other words, such a custom is bare custom having no law quality unlike the customary laws.
My humble view and suggestions thus are:
Such primitive customs as the Oro festival having no law quality and which offends against the express provisions of our constitution should be abolished, banned or strictly restricted to its ardent believers and therefore should not be made binding on the citizen at large. Furthermore, the Declaration on Race and Prejudice 1987 says;
‘all individuals and groups have the right to be different and to be regarded as such'.
This simply means though we collectively form a society, we still have a right to our individual beliefs and we have a right to be singled out from the practices of other people's beliefs.
As the Oro festival is a form of discrimination based on sex, it also offends against the provisions of s43 of the constitution. It is an imposed custom by the male society which does not promote equality of sexes hence not a progressive culture. In the Declaration of Principles Of International Cultural Co-operation, (17) the philosophy of the right to culture was stated in the preamble as follows:
‘for the wide diffusion of culture and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to dignity of man and constitutes a sacred duty which all nations must fulfill in a spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation.'
The illiterate members of our society who do not know their rights and when it is been infringed upon should be sensitized because even when they do know their rights, they are still to scared to sue the powers that be as this requires considerable courage. A further bloc is that the prospective litigant may be too poor to embark on the luxury of a costly and prolonged litigation. Justice may therefore elude him if the court is adamant on sacrificing human rights at the altar of customs and tradition. Perhaps, the courts could be guided with the fact that for contemporary Africa, the interpretation of culture must have a developmental content as development is a comprehensive i.e., economic, social and political process. Education is therefore the key as knowledge they say, is power.
If the applicable test for allowing such customs are ‘public policy' or ‘public interest', then we should be reminded that in spite of its apparent intractability and susceptibility to judicial child abuse, it could still be, in the hands of a sincere judge, employed constructively to mould the law in the overall interest of the society to which the law belongs.
‘With a good man in the saddle, the unruly horse can be kept in control. It can leap fences put up by fictions and come down on the saddle of justice…' (18)
Using public policy as a sole yardstick in determining applicability of a custom could lead to erroneous results. For instance, what could be the public interest benefit in restricting a woman from going to the hospital in the dead of the night while in labor and during the observance of the Oro rite? According to Denning M.R in Enderby town football club v. football association ltd; (19)
‘ I know that over 300 years ago, Hobart C.J. said that "public policy an unruly horse". It has often been repeated since. So unruly is the horse it is said…"that no judge should ever try to mount on it, less it runs away with him."
Conclusively, it is suggested that Government should provide free legal services to the illiterate and poor members of the society who wish to exercise their rights and be excused from such this barbaric practices.
Jean Jacques Rousseau once said, ‘man was born free, but he is everywhere held in chains by his fellow man', the Oro festival is a chain on the freedom of movement on the Nigerian woman. It should be banned, abolished or restricted for that very reason.
CONCLUSIONS.
If it took the world from (1791-1948) to admit the obvious, that certain fundamental rights attach to man as man and are therefore inalienable and cannot be removed without destroying or deforming his humanity, then there is great hope that there will come a day when barbaric customs such as the Oro festival will become optional and not binding on all the citizens resident or otherwise in area sin which it is being practiced. I believe the word ‘discrimination' will be expunged from our customs.
Thomas Paine's prayer in presenting his book to George Washington that ‘the rights of man may become universal' was finally answered and his aspirations realized by the General Assembly of the United Nations 157 years later! Since Rome was not built in a day, I fervently believe that the Oro festival will be abolished, banned or restricted on day mainly because it has no law quality, mostly because it infringes on a fundamental right to movement and majorly because it promotes gender stereotype.
In conclusion, I will like to quote an eminent justice of the Supreme court of Nigeria (20) who said,
‘we demand justice because we are human beings,
we merit justice because of our humanity'.
Stopping discrimination such as the Oro festival's infringement on the freedom of movement is not going to be easy, but it is a noble venture worth trying.
(1) Freed from slavery in 1827, Truth encountered the abolitionist movement in 1843 and became the first black woman to crusade for abolition; she was received by U.S. president Abraham Lincoln in the White House in 1864.
(2) 1976.
(3) Alan Watson,(source of law, legal change and ambiguity 1984).
(4) Spirit of the people.
(5) Public education in the united states. Microsoft R 2009 DVD. Redmond WA; Microsoft corporation 2008.
(6) French poet, prose writer, and humanist. (1364 - 1431)Italian-born French poet. She wrote The City of Women. She said "If it were customary to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences. Indeed, maybe they would understand them better."
(7) founded the Woman's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to obtaining the vote for women in Britain.
(8) Ibid
(10) Australian feminist writer Germaine Greer published her bestselling, groundbreaking book The Female Eunuch in 1970. In it she argued against the traditional nuclear family and in favor of a revolutionary empowerment of women.
(11) American writer and political activist, a leading figure in the women's rights movement. Steinem helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.
(12) (1759-1797), English author and feminist, born probably in London. Her best-known work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), asserts that intellectual companionship is the ideal of marriage and pleads for equality of education and opportunity between the sexes.
(13) Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria ,1999.
(14) 18th July, 2008-PM News.
Nigeria signed the convention on the 23rd of April 1984 and ratified it on 13th of June 1985.
(15)Nigerian Guardian- June 16, 2009.
(16) ADARAMOLA, Jurisprudence, fourth edition, 2008.
(17) Proclaimed by the General Conference of the UNESCO at its 40th session, 4 November 1966.
(18) Enderby town football club v. football association ltd.[1971] 1 ch. 591 at 606.
(19) [1971] 1 ch. 591 at 606.
(20) Oputa.J.S.C, Retired Justice of the Supreme Court Of Nigeria.
(2)
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