If you haven't roger that yet, I'm a feminist. So for the occasion I've decided to give you an opinion piece centered around women and gender rights once a week til then and perhaps beyond depending on current events and my inspiration.
For starter let me tell you how I became a feminist, what it means to me and where I see myself as a young African woman in the world.
As long as I can remember my family has been dominated by females. Not only in number but also in actual power of decision. Back in the days, and in some areas til today, having a girl in Cameroon was like having no child because in most Cameroonian tribes, females are not eligible to take over their father's wealth, names and cannot perform certain tradition rites relative to their family status in the traditional society. This position became later very detrimental to the condition of women in our society. There was no point investing in their education because when they would get married ( marriage being an automatic part of a woman's path in the Cameroonian context) they would take all that investment to their husband's family. While one could argue that such considerations can be washed off through education, anyone who has been exposed to West African men will tell you that having a male child is still an unshakable value that goes up to tell the virility of a man.This belief is so strong that even the most educated people in Cameroon are still trippin over the gender of their children.
My father, who found himself with 4 daughters and no boys decided to make the best out of his rather "unfortunate" predicament. My sisters and I were taught how to assemble furniture and gadgets: From changing car tires to fuses and setting up the stereo and satellite TV Box at home. We were at it! He took us to church on Sunday mornings and to the Soccer games if we were good in the afternoon. There was nothing we could not do in the name of gender. My Grandfather, the second most important male figure in my life, liked character: if he felt weakness in you he would really make you feel like a stepchild but if you could stand up to him, you would definitely win his heart... He made a point to toughen my notoriously "precious" self by teaching me how open a bottle with my teeth and kill chickens!!??
These little achievements were only possible under my father's roof and fed my self esteem big time. When I went to my relatives for the holidays or the weekend, I was always stunned by my female cousins catering to their brothers and being helpless in front of mere task as taking the trash out. The very strange thing is that those "princes" had no problem taking care of themselves when they came over to our place where gender equality ruled! I can even say that our competence earned us a bit more respect than they had for their helpless sisters...One very key element of my life was also that I had a working mom: My mom worked and went to school so she would always come home later than my dad. My mother lives in the belief that the sky is her limit and was more of a cheerleader than the enabler that my father was.
The mighty capable girls of my parents only had one command that was stated in many ways depending on their mood :"My girls are definitely better than many of those useless boys these people have been parading around", "Do not ever make me sorry for having girls!" yeah, basically "Do not to embarrass us".
One of my dad jokes or threat was that if we were mischievous he would marry us off; the usual formula was " You are beginning to cost me too much, if you break this X one more time I'm marrying you off to the first person who can refund me all that I spent on you so far".
By the time I was 14, I realized there was no dowry in my family therefore it was an empty threat: however, every time one of us is on the edge of trouble, my sisters and I over the years keep asking the troublesome one if she is ready for marriage... LOL
And Marriage or the intricacy of it in the Cameroonian society in mutation was a big factor in the formation of my feminist conscience. My numerous female cousins were for the most older than me, married or about to be by the time I entered puberty. I found out at 12 that a husband could prevent you from travelling, holding a job or attending school not by sulking around the house, but because even in a pending divorce, a married woman still needed his written permission to enjoy these privileges that I beheld as rights. As I grew, I began to see my female relatives and family friends being dealt all sorts of hardships due to their gender and I asked myself what contest did they fail to have been born women?
When you asked yourself such question you also begin to wonder if you would have rather be a male. For me the answer is and has always been No. I like being a woman. I actually love it. I like looking pretty, pampering myself, I like the skin that I'm in. Then I resolved that if I was not going to allow myself go through the kind of things I'd witness and was not going to change my gender, the only option left for me was to do my best to change the state of things.
I did not say I'm going to become a feminist. I just grew into feminism as my stands on various issues got closer to feminists ideals. As a matter of fact, in my early years, I did not like being called a feminist because of all the negative ideas of bitter, male castrating bitchiness associated with the concept: But overtime I got completely confident in who I wanted to be and am a very proud feminist because I am not trying to take anybody's place in the world, I'm not out to say "death to all male kind" for treating us like crap all these centuries, I'm not out for revenge or blood, all I want is to be treated fairly when I put my sweat in my work, to be respected socially to be valued and recognized just like anybody else. For me that's what feminism is about.
Amen!!!
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