The Gender Imbalance The Independent NEWS August 12, 2002 Posted to the web August 13, 2002 Banjul Gambian women seem to be at the wrong side of everything. When it was time to launch a puritanical campaign against immorality to please God and coax him into opening the skies to end the state of semi-drought, men turned to women in the streets and beat them unconscious. A few months ago, when the urge was felt to clamp down on prostitution, women suffered beatings, arrests and detention as the blame was heaped on them. The fact is that men should be honest to themselves and review the behaviour towards their wives, sisters, and other female members of the society. The recent report from the Women's Bureau pointing to a sad scenario of gender violence, indicates just how deep-seated stereotypes are, giving unjustified advantages to men over women in almost all aspects of life. Men are made to be comfortable with promiscuity, while those on the other side of the fence are not. Beatings, battery, rape, forced marriages and the perception of women as second-fiddles is the anti-thesis to the government's declared drive to put girls and by extension women at par with boys and men. The Independent reported an incident in which a woman was the victim of gang rape in Kunkujang a month earlier. Seven strong men took advantage of her physical, psychological, social and cultural weakness and forced themselves on her. The most disgusting thing was that nothing came out of it. The men are now allowed to walk the streets with an unperturbed conscience. She is left to nurse her pain and anguish - physical and psychological. This is discrimination, slavery and savage dominance. Something is not quite right in the way women are made to feel inferior to the opposite sex even though they may be more intelligent, more determined, more serious and even more capable than the men who are born to assert dominance as their birthright. Obviously something seems to be out of place when girls with all rights to be in school to compete with boys are told to stay at home or go to the farm or are hastily packed into forced marriages that are really manifest a lopsided interest. Something is grossly wrong in holding girls as commodities to be disposed of whenever the highest bidder appears. As for mothers, they are the by-products of generations of brainwashing before them would have learnt to be subservient and obsequious to her husband. A good wife she would always live to remember from the day when she was being married off is the one who does not question his husband's decisions. Something is definitely when such girls grow into adults to live very poor lives where their interests make up the back row of priorities for her husband. Something is serious deficient in the whole socio-cultural system, which preserve these stereotypes and ensure that from generation to generation girls and women can be even abused by men without really having the chance complain. Sometimes religion is wrongfully employed as a means of beating some unusually stubborn women to submission. Something awry needs to be put right when intelligent, literate and capable women are bypassed for unintelligent, incapable and lazy men to man important positions. How many women make it to offices? Check the National Assembly, which only the presence of about five to six women prevents from being an Assembly for men instead of an Assembly for the nation. In fact who can deny that this national institution is quite in effect operating as a traditional male stronghold. Check the number of people serving as ministers under Yahya Jammeh's leadership. Check the schools and calculate the ratio of girls to boys. They are under-represented everywhere. The voice of the few who have the energy, expertise and determination to speak out against the exploitation of women, always recoil into a hollow din because there is gender stereotype everywhere. We must stop paying lip- service to the cause of ending the plight of the Gambian woman. Gambian men be they in homes, offices and in the streets should be honest with themselves by giving women what is rightly theirs. We must stop acting as if we are doing women a favour by giving them the platform to state their case. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~