Ever since i read J S Mill's 'The Subjection of Women', i went through a
significant tranformation from a mere sympathesizer to the fight for women to
be break loose from the shackles of ignorance, male prejudice and dominance
and those societal norms that are down right discriminatory towards women
that had and continues to impede their progress since time immemorial to a
position which included a private championing of women's liberation,
especially to insensitive male friends who remain impervious to demonstration
about the need to be on equal terms with the sisters. After Mill, there were
of course other texts that came along but what made me to realise that
women's liberation and the developing world's efforts to make decent strides
their development efforts go hand in hand, was largely a reading of the
Indian Economist, Armatya Sen's pioneering work on women and development and
its almost determinist insistence that they are inextricably hooked that
propelled me to enthusiastically champion the cause of women. Seven long
years after reading this magnificently informed, illuminating and pioneering
book by Mill, i have to say that i have gone through another significant
transformation. I no longer enthusiastically endorse the women movements,
especially those as demented, twisted and perverted as that of the Andrea
Dworkins of this world. This is not say that i no longer support moves that
will genuinely help free society from all those norms, supersitutions and
prejudices that continue to impede the progress of women in society. Far from
it. What i mean to say here is that i view women's liberation in a very
different light and the late discovery that the logical conclusion of what
today's women's liberation movements seek to attain for women, far from
giving them or society at large any semblance of equality, would be a
perversion of that noble creed. Unfortunate as it is to say, but today's
feminism or "gender activism" - as the term generally applies to Africa and
the developing world - is not only a perversion of the notion of equality or
equal worth with women but will go as far as to imperil individual liberty
and societal cohesion. I strongly believe that all that propelled Mill to
valiantly call for an end to the subjection of women and the recognition for
the equal worth of all sexes has been perverted. And were he to be with us
today, he would be appalled by what is being said and carried out in the name
of equality.
My gradual cooling and current hostility towards women's liberation in its
current form is based on two different but related things. First the absurd
reasoning that the biological "handicaps" that nature has predisposed women
to be at a comparative disadvantage to their male counterpart ought to be
righted through political and social finessing and must ultimately be
neutered for society to claim any semblance of the equality creed. The second
is the insistence that in order to end discrimination against women and
integrate them into society proper, the State has got to discriminate against
others through preferential treatments in public office appointments or
elections, i.e., affirmative action that will compensate for the subjugation
of women and in the process help in their integration. The problem with these
shifts from the Millian liberalism - that has guided feminism in the early
part of the last century - is that instead of promulgating a more equal
society and freeing more women from the shackles that continue to impede
them, has only helped enhanced the social status of a handful few of
metropolitan feminist professional elites and their immediate families and in
the process turned upside the very notion of equal worth.
The ridiculous notion that such biological "handicaps" like bearing children
- that can impede women in their public pursuits or careers and thus placing
them at a disadvantage - can be fine tuned by political and social
engineering to the point where women can claim to be on a par with men in
terms of mobility, space and flexibility, can never help equate what is at
best a biological "hinderance" and in the event will turn out to be
regressive. Since this is susceptible misinterpretation, i will make myself
clearer. The point is not to say that women can't have careers whilst raising
or helping to raise families. Indeed, experience has shown that this is very
possible and admirable even if is very Herculean. The point is that the way
men and women are biologically endowed, has predisposed men to find it
virtually hitch-free to be part of raising families whilst having a
hassle-free public life or a demanding career. In short, the ease with which
men can be part of two demanding and oft conflicting spheres cannot be the
same with women. This is not because of male prejudices, societal
discrimination or the shackles of ignorance but the impediments imposed upon
women by biological disposition. And no amount of political finessing, social
engineering and radical agitation can level this playing field to the point
where women can be on a par with men in this regard. Yet, modern feminism -
at least its most radical proseltizers - believes that the goal of true
liberation and equal worth cannot be ascribed to any society that lets
biological dispositions let men have a greater degree of ease with which to
juggle both the private and public spheres moderately more successfully i.e.,
be part of raising families and leading extremely demanding public roles or
careers and leave women to pathetically trail along. So now, apart from
dismantling artificial laws that have impeded women's progress, modern
feminists insist that natural impediments have to be dismantled - not
ironically through, perhaps, genetical manipulation; which it might sense to
appeal to given its predisposition towards ameliorating biological conditions
that impede progress. Rather, through radical agitation, and with the help of
their radical male allies, society must go through a complete revolution -
with all its implications - only then can such state of affairs alter. It is
true most moderate feminists do not subscribe to this; yet their own version
of how this can be corrected is to appeal to the long haul of political and
social engineering to correct this. Even then such political and social
engineering - which invariably comes through preferential treatment for women
and reverse discrimination - is logically and practically bound to stifle
liberty and pervert equality.
Not only does preferential treatment and reverse discrimination - or
affirmative action as it is popularly referred to - malign liberty and
equality, but experience has shown that wherever it has been implemented to
integrate those who have been at the brunt of past societal ills or
discrimination, the vast majority of those classified under such groups have
little or nothing to show for it. This is simply because preferential
treatment does not only place quotas on such groups, but it tends to pick the
creme de la creme of such groups and only within their circles for those to
benefit from such preferential treatments. What do we mean by this? When
preferential treatment is meted out to a group on the basis of past
discrimination, it invariably has conditions set up that before any member of
such groupings can claim elibility to it, has got to meet. Now, eligibility
invariably almost always from the emerging middle classes and their
offsprings. And because they already know their way around the system by
virtue of being there before, having done it and having strengthened their
positions in the social strata, almost always it is their children who will
succeed them in eligibility and end up sharing the pie amongst themselves. In
this scheme of things, those at the lower end of the social strata will
invariably fail to get their share of the preferential treatment cake because
they are most likely going to lose out to middle class kids when they compete
for limited space available in the quota set for them. This is why the gulf
between the have-nots and haves of those groups that have been extended this
largesse is not declining albeit the maintenance of preferential treatments.
What is meant for a group to help themselves integrate into the mainstream is
largely confined within the reaches of another elite group within that
marginalised group simply because of the futility and absurdity of such means
to equate situations that invariably require recognising that within even
disadvantaged groups their are handicaps that leave others hapless no matter
the largesse extended to them.
Nowhere is this more truer than between the African rural woman metropolitan
professional elite. The latter gets all the largesse the State feels obliged
to extend to women in order to integrate them whilst the former largely
represents the former self of women. There is a dissembling argument here
that feminists invoke to aid this malignant situation. They never fail to
point out that those rustic women folk fail to integrate because amongst
others the tyranny of men still prevail and women are still unlettered. All
true to a degree. Yet, what cannot be denied is the fact that whatever
preferential treatment the State doles out to women in the hope that they can
be integrated will make circles around these very metropolitan middle class
women and those immediately around them who were calling for it in the urban
areas before it trickles down to their rustic compatriots in the provinces.
Which takes me to the question of whether preferential treatment for
marginalised women in a polity can ameliorate their situation? Experience
heavily indicts the idea that preferential treatment extended to marginalised
women in a polity can liberate them. Preferential treatment for women in a
polity where the vast majority of women are still shackled by ignorance
cannot by itself enhance their situation. The experience of the PPP years are
revealing. Through its preferential treatment of the early 80s women like
Nyimasata Sanneh Bojang, who subsequently became the country's first elected
woman MP, outfits like the Women's Bureau and state bureaucracies like the
women's ministery, the PPP managed to fool itself that it has done a great
deal for women. Yet , what appears to be the case is that all these
"advancements" have virtually produced nothing for the ordinary woman in the
rural areas. True, more women are going to school and some highly educated
now. But it is a trickle when one estimates what was involved and the
duration. There and then one goes back to my point earlier stated which is:
such preferential treatments benefit the metropolitan feminist elites and
their immediate families more before it eventually trickles down to the
unlettered rural woman. Preferential treatment in the same breath of reverse
discrimination for women candidates in elections will invariably produce
similar results. Whilst a few metropolitan women elites would pretend that
their status has been enhanced, the rural woman remain detached from such a
state.
The new spin from the APRC machinery via Kebba Joke is that the UDP by
allegedly refusing to adopt affirmative action and fielding women candidates
in safe seats, is a very "callous" party indeed. If all that Joke attributes
to Juwara as having allegedly said turns out to be true, then i must say that
despite the ideological chasm that exists between me and Juwara, we are in
agreement on this one. If the UDP wishes to genuinely end the plight of
women, then they will have to courageously go after the root causes of what
impede the progress of women i.e, statutory and customary laws that exist in
society and abolishing them. If the UDP musters the courage and ban female
circumcision, they would have given Gambian women more than a million Isatou
Njie-Saidys! If a UDP gov't that is courageous enough to muster the effort to
end all those discriminatory customary laws and norms like inheritance laws
that impede women, they would have given Gambian women another million Isatou
Njie-Saidys! It is not such token window-dressings like appointing
metropolitan feminist elites to the higher echelons of the State machinery
that sets women free. Nor is it such affirmative actions like reverse
discrimination for women so they can enter parliament. This is nothing but
romantic hogwash. History is littered with women who through the odds have
defied common belief and led difficult socities without affirmative action.
For such women of history like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher,
Sheikh Hasina, etc, etc, fought for their positions in extraordinary
circumstances without holding their hands up for preferential treatment.
Besides, what has all these Jammeh appointments of women to high positions in
gov't done for women folk in the Gambia generally? Has it humanised him to
the point where he will desist from sending animals after their children and
butchering them in April 2000? Has it ended female circumcision? Has not the
discourse of female circumcision not been banned in the public media in order
to pander to the bigotry of the very forces that are keeping women down? Has
all those customary and statutory laws that still discriminate against women
been abolished? Has not Isatou Njie-Saidy - herself an icon of the feminist
movement and a mother to children - not helped carry out an order that ended
the lives of 15 innocent souls and remained with the same unrepentant and
vile gov't still whoring her intellect for it?
Reading all these critiques, the reader might be tempted in jumping to the
rash conclusion that i'm a misogynist and or a reactionary fogey. Far from
it. Despite my cooling towards women's liberationist movements and hostility
towards radical feminism, at heart i remain a liberal progressive who wishes
to see an end to any form of discrimination that keeps groups or individuals
down. How then will a liberal deal with the plight of women and those
disadvantaged by adverse discrimination - past and present? Within a genuine
liberal order, such irrelevant charcteristics like race, gender, ethnicity,
religion, etc, etc, will be classified non issues in the public sphere as a
law shall be promulgated to end any form of general discrimination against
any group and or individual. Any statute or customary law found to be
inconsistent with the above and or a shackle around the legs of such groups
like women shall hencefcorth be abolished. Laws will then be introduced that
makes equal opportunities a fact of national life. Women and any other group
that does not feature heavily in national life for that matter will be
**encouraged** through sensitisation - not by "gender activists" but by the
State through its department responsible for information and or education -
to be active participants in both civic and state insitutions and or life.
Here i hasten to emphasize that such **encouragement** has no no truck with
affirmative action, preferential treatment and reverse discrimination. In a
truly liberal order, discrimination will cease to be a divisive because it
would invariably be defeated by progress and if it is lucky to be left with
any remants, be consigned to the fringes of obscurity. In truly liberal
order, women and men would be partners and not antagonists. For these
reasons, a truly liberal State really has no use for such divisive outfits
and measures like the Women's Bureau, a State ministry reponsible solely for
women, affirmative action and the polarising politics of feminism.
Hamjatta Kanteh
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
