Being a woman.

I was out looking for an apartment some time ago, and I was met with a lot of questions from both the house owners and the agents. Questions like, “are you married? If not, why are you not married? Where do you work? What do you do? How many male friends do you have? Do you have a fiancé? If yes, why did he not show up instead of you? Do you have any relevant male figure in your life? And so much more. At some point, I got so angry that I wanted to burst out, not in tears but in full rage and ask a lot of questions in return.

The most annoying part is that these questions didn’t just come from the old landlords, but from landladies and young landlords as well. I don’t know but many times, when we ask them why, they say it’s because they don’t like the single women of this generation.

My friend was disappointed just last week after she had agreed to pay the rent for a particular apartment. Unsurprisingly, she got a call from the landlord asking her if she’s married. That was the end. She lost the apartment because they needed her to bring the husband to them so they can have man-to-man talks.

Many years back in my village, it was this same mentality that sent a lot of women and girls into marriages that later turned them miserable. The popular belief in my village was that the women should be trained to do basic and complex chores, and trained on how to keep home because soon, they would be married off to the highest bidder so they can start a ‘new life’, but for the complementary gender, male, it’s not like that.

The male child in my village is the king, the conqueror, and the knight. Any family that doesn’t have a male child is headed towards doom. So, all the tips and tricks to be rich, and useful to oneself and the society at large are given to the males because the women are supposed to depend on them throughout their lives, no matter what the male does. The women are saddled with the responsibilities of accepting the excesses of all males in their lives because they are the less powerful gender, that is why if you get to my village today, you’ll see girls of twenty years old pregnant, and with toddler being battered by the husband or the father or even the brothers, yet nothing will be done to it because she was the one that triggered their anger, even though that is not the case.

You don’t stand up to a male they say, that is why we have a lot of men today who see women as properties to be owned, or an item to be kept at home.

I remember a time I was job-hunting. I met this man who said “girls don’t have to work. They only need to submit to the will of people like us so they can get what they want” at the point of interview. Right there, and then, I knew I was never going back there, except I was ready to get harassed. This is what being a woman means in the society we are in.

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Thankfully, there are initiatives clamoring for the eradication of these archaic beliefs. For equity in workspaces and benefits. People are now getting to realise that being a woman means being a home keeper and a lot more. Being a woman means having a strong emotional intelligence. Being a woman means having a strong leadership skill, zeal and the will to be more than the tag that the society has placed on her. Being a woman means raising highly intelligent children to build a community devoid of crimes in all its forms.

Right now, I’m more than happy that people are getting to see that gender wars are not meant to happen in the first place and are trying to effect the change. Whether a man or a woman, peaceful coexistence and not battle for the strongest or for the most relevant is what will make the world better.