“It’s so unfair — there’s a Women’s Day, so why can’t there be a Men’s Day?” wonder woebegone males countrywide each August. The answer is that every day (including August 9) is in actual fact a man’s day.
Yes, we have a Constitution that enshrines gender equality, bodily integrity and reproductive rights. And, undoubtedly, there are many women playing an active role in public life. But there’s a long, long way to go.
We live in a country where girls are fondled on their way to school. Taxi drivers strip a woman to her underwear for daring to wear a miniskirt. The barbaric practice of virginity testing continues (despite it being illegal to subject girls younger than 16 to this). Sex workers are harassed and persecuted by the police. Women face discrimination in the workplace. And the head of our ruling party purportedly believes that a woman wearing a kanga is an invitation — or, even worse, a justification — to have sex with her.
We live in a country where there are 54 000 reported rapes of women — and countless more face unspeakable abuse.
The advent of our democracy has done little to improve the lot of women. Why? Because misogyny and patriarchy are ingrained cultural norms among men — both black and white. It is accepted, even if only implicitly, that women are second-class citizens, subservient to and owned by their masters — men.
We have a crisis of values in which men are brought up to believe they are entitled to treat women as objects to abuse, hurt, exploit, rape, harass, control and patronise. Young boys growing up seeing their mothers being bashed about know no better. And so this vicious cycle of oppression continues.
But can men alone shoulder responsibility for this parlous state of affairs? It is important to bear in mind the role that some (and not all) women play in perpetuating patriarchy. They do this in passively accepting their fate, and in reinforcing the misogynistic worldview espoused by their husbands, raising chauvinists as a result of this.
Senior women members of the ANC — especially those in the Cabinet — have failed utterly to take action against the rampant domestic abuse women face. They have been bought — co-opted into power, perks and patronage. Their loyalty to a patriarchal regime indifferent to the suffering of women has thus far ensured that South Africa’s women remain trapped in their suffering.
Most of these senior party women have remained silent over the HIV/Aids pandemic — of which women bear the brunt. They have been toeing a line that has led to countless deaths and unnecessary infections — the latter, especially, being a direct result of the government’s recalcitrance over the implementation of programmes for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The most notable exception, our erstwhile deputy minister of health, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, was fired for daring to show integrity and initiative in her response to the crisis.
There are signs of hope. We have a vibrant civil society — and its successes in challenging the Mbeki government’s Aids denialism has proven that through strength, courage and perseverance, things can change.
The media can also make a huge difference in dismantling the notions and representations of patriarchal society and the tyrannical, dehumanising symptoms that stem from it. Talk Radio 702′s inspirational Redi Direko spearheaded a protest march to the Noord Street taxi rank (where the miniskirt incident occurred), accompanied by hundreds of women voicing their opposition against misogynist thugs.
The struggle to achieve nonsexism is not over. Liberation and true gender equality is an elusive dream for many millions of South African women and still needs to be fought for — and won. The status quo of the implicit oppression of women will continue unless women — and enlightened men — actively challenge sexism (and the patriarchal systems that underscore it) in all its manifestations.
Most of the women in the ANC are tokens, with some brilliant exceptions. The DA, with a policy based only on merit, has a majority of women in high postions – go figure?
Thank you for addressing this issue, Alex. As a man your comments will–sadly–carry more weight than a hundred similar columns by women.
No doubt you will receive some responses questioning your masculinity and a like number of non-responses from men whose policy is to greet views like yours with polite silence. Such was the response to a book by Dr. Ashley Montagu a pre-eminent anthropologist. In 1952, Dr. Montagu published his findings on the comparative survival strengths and weaknesses of men and women. To the (largely silent) astonishment of his peers, Dr. Montagu skewered hundreds of unsupported assumptions that had become ‘the received (erroneous) wisdom’ of the patriarchal era.
What he uncovered came as no surprise to most women whose daily experience of male incompetence and deluded notions of their inborn superiority had long been an ‘in-joke’. However, ‘Feminism’ had long since disappeared from the social radar screen despite the fact that women had spent the war years (1939-45) doing everything from driving buses to building bombers to teaching young men how to fly them! (Despite this fact, women were paid only 60% of the salary rate of the men who had held those same jobs just weeks before! Guess how that affected the ‘bottom line’ during the war…)
The immediate post-war era saw women ‘de-mobbed’ in their millions and sent home to do their ‘real’ jobs of being supportive wives and mothers whilst their husbands returned to their jobs or found new ones– at much higher rates of pay, of course.
If you would like more ammunition for future articles on the subject of female equality, Dr. Montagu’s book was revised and re-issued in 1969. The title was “The Natural Superiority of Women”. The second time around, the book drew a lot more attention because feminsim was once again on the rise in response to institutionalised misogyny and the abuses it engendered.
Thanks again, Alex; it is encouraging that a young man is prepared to face inevitable ridicule from chauvinist quarters in order to make the argument that in a patriarchal world every day is man’s day.
I think that female politicians in general have done absolutely nothing for women. There are lone indivuals trying to make a change but they are in the minority. The ANC Women’s league – what do they do besides support kanga man? It makes me so angry that women have failed women so badly. It’s bad enough how women are treated by men – we don’t have to add to that.
As for Women’s Day – I refuse on principle to participate in that farce. While it might have been launched with the best of intentions (and we know where that road can lead) the day has been co-opted by commercial concerns. It now has as much value and significance as Valentine’s Day.
To Alex:
A well said article. Women are not emancipated in rural areas at all, especially the old and uneducated ones.
I mean in KZN a woman’s shack was burnt because she dared wore a pair of trousers. How behind some males are!
I do get the idea that in SA the women in the ANc are there as “fill ups” for quotas, especially when one is Winnie Mandela and her notorious involvement with the death of “stompie” the boy activist.
However I also get the feeling that the DA women would like to be Margaret Thatcher and have little understading of the problems of most SA women becuase of their priviliged upbringing in apartheid SA.
Looks like another reason for a new third pary that’s not based apon or originated from race classifications, to include competent women of all colours.
Thank you Alex. Well said.
Sadly, (and in point of fact) your column has received a very different response to that of your colleague Charlene Smith ‘I’ve had it with the men in this country’ – despite the fact that the basic message is exactly the same.
I am a independent, educated and empowered woman and of course there are many of us in this country and world-wide, but the sad fact remains that the ideals of our constitution are not experienced by the majority of the women in this country. And until there are more men like you who have the courage to admit it NOTHING will change.
I LIKE Womans’ Day. It means I always have a public holiday after my birthday!
Selfish? Yes! But I am human!
Firstly I think you’re mistaken for equating mysoginy with patriarchy. Perhaps you need to make your definition of patriarchy clear for us all. Mine is taken from a book Garbage Generation by Dr David Amneus, there’s also an online version which you can read for free, just google it.
In this book the author explains the relationship between patriarchy and civilization on the one hand and matriarchy and social disarray on the other hand. Whether you agree with it or not-once you’ve read it you cannot help but be amazed by the similarities between our society and the matriarchal one’s that he mentioned in his work.
You will also understand why women bear the brunt of HIV-AIDS.