Today's woman is society's creation

"Women today are not like our mothers!" I am sure you have heard this said often, mostly by men who do not do half the things their own fathers did to make women act like their mothers did.

Behold, I submit to you that the women we have today, good, bad, Akothee and in between, are a product of society. By the way, I have nothing against Akothee. I love her, we should all be so gangsta!

These days it is not weird to find women in mjengo sites lifting stones like men. Many think this is a sign that society is ‘moving forward’. That this phenomenon somehow supports the anecdote ‘Anything a man can do, a woman can do (better)’. I say it is a break down of and in society. Where are these women’s fathers, brothers, uncles, sons?

We should all be Africans. Yes, some of our practices were not kind to women, but we can evolve from those ones. Just like Christianity was once an extremist outfit full of rapists, robbers and murders, but now they appear reformed, we too should give ourselves a chance to actually reform.

In the old days, when women were like many men’s mothers (please stop and roll your eyes then continue reading), the men then played their roles. All the women in a man’s life were his problem. It was his duty to see that they were as comfortable as he could make them.

If his brother died or was impotent, he stepped in. If his mother’s roof was falling, he fixed it. If a hyena ate his wife’s chicken, he hunted down the animal and killed it and if his daughter (niece) needed a dress for the village boogie, he got her one. And so, it came to pass that men were respected by women because they did men things, well.

(I am not in denial that women were many times beaten into submission among other heinous crimes. Again, if we were allowed to evolve like the barbarians who are nowadays seen as the custodians of good manners, imagine for a minute where we would be.)

Before we take out our fingers and point at products of society, let us look inward and figure out how we are contributing to it. These days we are so quick to label young girls gold diggers or slay queens. When I was young (er), society had not broken down as much as it has today, though even now my family unit still works relatively well.

I did not have to worry too much if my parents could not or did not want to give me some little pocket money. All I had to do was visit uncles and older cousins in town at their offices and I was sure to leave with enough lunch money to buy my personal things. Maybe it is why we were ok with dating our agemates because we did not need them to provide for us at that stage.

Nowadays young girls literally have to hustle for sanitary towels and other items. Their agemates cannot afford to give them money, so where do they go? Sugar daddies, now commonly known as sponsors. Well this may not be the case for all young ladies who go out with sponsors, but imagine if these young girls had strong, reliable men around them who were not after a transaction?

I have been told many times that these days we, women do not respect men. We are hard headed, we talk back and, most importantly, we are not submissive. I want to surprise someone here today, submission is not an on and off switch.

You really cannot expect a woman to hustle as hard as you do if not harder; be in the workplace competing with men; yell at the mechanic; find out how to reconnect power after it has been disconnected; and buy food with her own money and bring it to the house, which she probably pays half the rent or mortgage, to submit to you. You are peers.

As a girl, I always thought men were very busy people who knew important things. It was not uncommon to hear, ‘let’s wait for your dad to tell us.’ These days many men know very little and compete with women for help. How do you want to be respected if you cannot respect yourself?

Remember, we can only work with what you give us. Men, do better and maybe more.