I’d been smiling before, but that slipped into a grimace when I saw the topic the lecturer wrote on the board. It read, in bold letters. GENDER EQUALITY.
I could already hear the snickers of my colleagues, mostly the guys. I dropped my pen, waiting to be entertained and genuinely hoping I wouldn’t hear anything too upsetting that would make me snap. This topic is quite a sensitive one.
Several hours later and I smiled at the coincidence that I was going to write on this thoughtful prompt by 
Do you believe that women have a very clear role today in society? If so, what is that role?
Things have gotten better. Things have gotten way better, I realized as I listened to the lecturer drone about how things were with women, from the Bible times to past cultural times. The ordeals women had to face and the set roles that were specific to us. He gave illustrations using this instance of a family. Twins(boy and girl). Let’s call them John and Jane.
John and Jane are siblings and as soon as they begin to grow, John is scolded for crying, using the statement, “Why are you crying? Are you a woman? Be quiet.” He’s told to go out and play football and asked to join in the harvesting instead of helping out in the kitchen because he’s a man and men don’t do things around the kitchen.
Then we move to Jane. She’s told when she wants to join John to watch cartoons to come help in the cooking. “Don’t you know you’re a woman?” her mother chides. “And that no man would marry a woman who can’t cook?” She’s chided to close her legs and not spread them out because she’s a girl and taught not to raise her voice at all, let alone at a man. Because she’s a woman and should be soft-spoken, nodding ever obediently to the instructions her husband gives her.
From time, women had fixed roles, all revolving around the home. Caring, cooking, nurturing, birthing and generally keeping her home and her husband. The sole duty of the woman.
It’s been a long journey but it’s beautiful to see that progress has been made. That gradually we’re shifting. To a place of equality. Or at least a position where the roles women have aren’t so strictly defined. Because at the end of the day, roles are subjective. And the reason why a woman’s role was claimed to be a particular thing is because that’s what society dictated to her mother, and her grandmother and great-grandmother, who all passed it to her because of the treatments they faced. These are your roles and this is who you are to be.
Roles are subjective. And today in society, we’ve come to see it for what it is. There’s no strict role that a particular gender should be subjected to and it’s beautiful seeing that men and women with similar thought processes are making their voices heard.
If anything, the role of a woman today, in my opinion, is to be herself. To spread her wings and fly. And fly with abandon for that matter. To embrace the change happening all around her as a way of forging her path. Redefining herself away from the expectations of society into who she truly wants to be. So she says that rather than be in the kitchen which she’s never had a passion to be in, she wants to join her brothers and male friends to play football.
She says she wants to watch as Dad changes the tyres and the generator plug because she genuinely finds it fascinating and wants to learn it. She looks around her classroom in college and determines within herself to be the president of her faculty.
Speaking of....
I heard very pleasant news one day two years ago. We’d had a video call with my immediate extended family and one of my cousins had announced that she’d won the election and been appointed the SUG(Student Union Government) President of her college.
Amid the shouts and praises by the entire family, she went to tell us what she’d been told by the other candidate(a guy) who laughed in her face and asked her to politely leave the race before she embarrassed herself any further. He went on, with all of his magnanimity, to offer her a position as his Vice President since she, in his words, “at least had a pretty face.”
According to my cousin, she’d never been more spurred to contest for the position. And so she did. You can guess what happened. I know I’m more or less an emotional wreck but I had tears in my eyes while I listened. It’s the kind of thing I love to hear.
The truth is that currently and I think even for a long while after now, we as women will still face things like this. Some men and even women laughing in our faces and telling us not to “do too much.” They’ll tell us to know our place and that we should know better to go after the things we want because it’s a man’s world and we’re only here to help them through it. (Yeah, a woman told me this once)
But we’ll let them know that we have no more definitive roles in society. That we can do what we want and be who we want. That we’re humans with equal rights and wouldn’t have our dreams, hopes or even esteem trampled on by anyone.
It’s a long journey but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting clearer and brighter.
Cheers to all the wonderful ladies of the world!
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