One Struggle That Does Not Have To Continue
Comments
By Norma
Sat 4 Sep, 2010 - 13:47
This is a very impressive article. I find it heart-warming that a man would stand up for the rights of women and not feel threatened by it. I don't think that men should ever feel threatened by women. Most women, even with equal rights, still want the man to be a man.
casino online
Giocare al casinò online potrebbe diventare una dipendenza, come la lotteria. La differenza è che il casino online gratis vi intrattiene anche con la musica e la sua grafica.
By Anonymous
Wed 1 Sep, 2010 - 09:18
While endorsing these sentiments I wish to emphasize that in the struggle women need not feel `anti' men, or be aggressive in our struggle for human rights of women. Mostly, children fall into and grow into age-old roles that have been biologically defined because it was the women who were visibly pregnant and had breasts and, with the suckling babe,needed protection. By assuming a peripheral role, the men are often not getting `ready' for fathering, and all the restrictions on freedom this implies. Jointly discussing what roles couples wish to adopt or share, and re-visiting the couples picture regularly to see if you are happy with that division of labour is important to bring it all into awareness and under our mutual `control'.
By Anonymous
Wed 1 Sep, 2010 - 08:34
Thanks Mbuyiselo for a thoughtful article. I think the challenge is that people who are bullied become bullies themselves. There is a weakness in a bully, not a strength. So the answer is to empower both men and women, so that they both have high self worth and neither feels the need to bully the other.
And why cant both men and women wear a skirt for a change? Perhaps we need to institute national skirt day - when men and women need to explore what it feels like to feel both vulnerable and powerful in a different way.
As Women's Month comes to a close, I hope this year's celebration has provided us men an opportunity to reflect about our role in an ongoing struggle facing South Africans today.
It is the struggle to achieve gender equality and the struggle to respect the rights of all women in our country. And as men we should be asking ourselves difficult, unconventional and uncomfortable questions, such as: Does the empowerment of women mean that we should feel threatened?
The Oxford Dictionary defines struggle as "making forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint" or "making determined efforts under difficulty." I find the two definitions apt, especially considering the many "difficulties" faced by women in South Africa.
Research by the Medical Research Council (MRC) indicates that one in four women in South Africa has experienced physical violence at some point in her life. Another horrifying MRC study found that one in four South African men admitted having raped a woman - and nearly 75 percent of these had done so by the age of 20.
A further 50 percent of men said they had perpetrated domestic violence, with one in every six admitting abusing a woman in the previous 12 months. A national study found that a woman is killed by an intimate partner every six hours.
If this does not a struggle make, I don't know what does.
For many in South Africa daily life is a constant struggle. Because of this, I think it's time men set aside one pointless struggle, the struggle we erroneously tend to think of as our main reason for existence: the struggle to control and dominate women.
Taking up the better struggle - the sharing of power with women - has sometimes made a lot of us men uncertain, confused and angry as we battle to find our place as men in an age of growing women's power and equality. We have no tools, strategies or long-term programmes to address the many inner, invisible struggles we face on a daily basis. But surely violence is not the solution.
The struggle against apartheid was simple, clear and straightforward. We all knew who and what the enemy was and what needed to be done to dismantle that hateful and reprehensible system.
Today's struggle is totally different than yesterdays. Today's struggle is one that involves a mindset and behavioural change in order to bring about a human, non-violent, caring and compassionate society. Black men and black women, in particular, were united in the trenches in fighting apartheid, but the same black men are unable to find a connection to, or solution for, today's gender struggle through which women are also trying to become free from another hateful, reprehensible system: oppressive patriarchy.
What we seem to be grappling with as men is a fear of losing that which we think makes us men. What we don't see is that when woman are liberated from their day-to-day struggle against oppression, it will also free us men - in freeing women we will find our own liberation.
And there are other positive spinoffs.
Freeing women is also about economic liberation - which would mean eventual freedom from some of our other daily struggles. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has a database which measures the economic and political power women hold in 162 countries. Its findings show that in almost every country where women have achieved high levels of power and enjoy greater freedoms; there is a very strong economy.
There are few areas in our lives as men that are not a struggle in the hectic 21st century. There's no need to keep struggling to suppress women - and the fight to free women should not be so difficult.
As men we somehow think it means taking our pants off and letting women wear them. But why can't we both wear the proverbial pants?
It is our inability to confront this new struggle that makes us despondent, desperate, dejected and sometimes empty shells. It's not going to be easy to move forward and confront each other about our own silence and connivance in the degradation and humiliation of women in our country, but it's something we have to do.
While winning our political struggles was a major achievement for this country, so too will be our triumph if we can bring about gender equality in South Africa, if we can set an example for the region and for the world.
As we mark National Woman's Month, we should raise our voices together and shout A luta continua. Although the struggle continues, it does not have to go on forever if we men reject the oppressive nature bequeathed to us by patriarchy. Let us men slip loose from these shackles that tell us we are inherently the only gift to mankind and let us embrace, as equal partners, all of womankind.
- Mbuyiselo Botha is government and media relations manager at the Sonke Gender Justice Network. This article is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service. It is republished here with the permission of Gender Links http://www.genderlinks.org.za.
It is the struggle to achieve gender equality and the struggle to respect the rights of all women in our country. And as men we should be asking ourselves difficult, unconventional and uncomfortable questions, such as: Does the empowerment of women mean that we should feel threatened?
The Oxford Dictionary defines struggle as "making forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint" or "making determined efforts under difficulty." I find the two definitions apt, especially considering the many "difficulties" faced by women in South Africa.
Research by the Medical Research Council (MRC) indicates that one in four women in South Africa has experienced physical violence at some point in her life. Another horrifying MRC study found that one in four South African men admitted having raped a woman - and nearly 75 percent of these had done so by the age of 20.
A further 50 percent of men said they had perpetrated domestic violence, with one in every six admitting abusing a woman in the previous 12 months. A national study found that a woman is killed by an intimate partner every six hours.
If this does not a struggle make, I don't know what does.
For many in South Africa daily life is a constant struggle. Because of this, I think it's time men set aside one pointless struggle, the struggle we erroneously tend to think of as our main reason for existence: the struggle to control and dominate women.
Taking up the better struggle - the sharing of power with women - has sometimes made a lot of us men uncertain, confused and angry as we battle to find our place as men in an age of growing women's power and equality. We have no tools, strategies or long-term programmes to address the many inner, invisible struggles we face on a daily basis. But surely violence is not the solution.
The struggle against apartheid was simple, clear and straightforward. We all knew who and what the enemy was and what needed to be done to dismantle that hateful and reprehensible system.
Today's struggle is totally different than yesterdays. Today's struggle is one that involves a mindset and behavioural change in order to bring about a human, non-violent, caring and compassionate society. Black men and black women, in particular, were united in the trenches in fighting apartheid, but the same black men are unable to find a connection to, or solution for, today's gender struggle through which women are also trying to become free from another hateful, reprehensible system: oppressive patriarchy.
What we seem to be grappling with as men is a fear of losing that which we think makes us men. What we don't see is that when woman are liberated from their day-to-day struggle against oppression, it will also free us men - in freeing women we will find our own liberation.
And there are other positive spinoffs.
Freeing women is also about economic liberation - which would mean eventual freedom from some of our other daily struggles. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has a database which measures the economic and political power women hold in 162 countries. Its findings show that in almost every country where women have achieved high levels of power and enjoy greater freedoms; there is a very strong economy.
There are few areas in our lives as men that are not a struggle in the hectic 21st century. There's no need to keep struggling to suppress women - and the fight to free women should not be so difficult.
As men we somehow think it means taking our pants off and letting women wear them. But why can't we both wear the proverbial pants?
It is our inability to confront this new struggle that makes us despondent, desperate, dejected and sometimes empty shells. It's not going to be easy to move forward and confront each other about our own silence and connivance in the degradation and humiliation of women in our country, but it's something we have to do.
While winning our political struggles was a major achievement for this country, so too will be our triumph if we can bring about gender equality in South Africa, if we can set an example for the region and for the world.
As we mark National Woman's Month, we should raise our voices together and shout A luta continua. Although the struggle continues, it does not have to go on forever if we men reject the oppressive nature bequeathed to us by patriarchy. Let us men slip loose from these shackles that tell us we are inherently the only gift to mankind and let us embrace, as equal partners, all of womankind.
- Mbuyiselo Botha is government and media relations manager at the Sonke Gender Justice Network. This article is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service. It is republished here with the permission of Gender Links http://www.genderlinks.org.za.
Share this:
Printer-friendly versionAdd Comments
Vacancies
Events
-
Monday, February 13, 2012
-
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
-
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Opportunities
-
10/02/2012
-
10/02/2012
-
13/02/2012
-
14/02/2012
-
15/02/2012
By Anonymous