Friday, January 13, 2006
A Woman’s Work Is Never Done
Throughout history, there has been a consistent and illogical connection made between biological capability and social and moral obligations. Somebody who follows this false logic might say something like this: Women are physically able to give birth thus it is their social obligation to be a mom and stay at home to cook, clean and raise the child. If the mother does not perform this function of being a “mom” as it is traditionally understood, she is failing her moral obligation. Hopefully you can spot the huge hole in the logic between physiological capability and social obligation. Why does physically giving birth tie a woman closer to raising the child than physically providing the sperm? True, women provide breast milk, but again, this physical process comes to an end like a term of labor and you still need to bridge the gap from physical capability to social expectation. Biological causes can only have direct biological consequences. (I have the capability to feel when my skin is being burned, so I pull my hand away from boiling water.) As we can see, Biology is something people appeal to give their argument for maintaining a certain social arrangement the appearance of irrefutable credibility. The piece that people insert to bridge the gap between biological ability and social obligations is social norms. Societal norms is just another way of saying social obligations, thus we see the false logic turns on it self, social norms propagate social norms, the whole thing is circular and there is no particular justification for why the social norm exists the way it does, or even if it is correct.
The reason for this brief exercise in logic that might be leaving some with the impression of leftist University Speak is to show that this type of thinking has real life consequences. This social norm is propagated again and again; women swallow it and in turn propagate it onto younger generations of women. Here are some of the practical consequences that come from when the social norm mandates that your gender role is to provide for your husband and children:
Ex- scission is the process of female gender mutilation. Often a trusted family member (grandmother) will come in the night time to take the girl just entering puberty, into an unsanitary room where a man uses an unsanitary knife to remove the clitoris and to prevent sex with anyone until marriage, the vagina is sewn shut. In many villages, like the villages that surround where I live, this is the general rule and not the exception. Girls education and empowerment volunteers purport that between 60 -80 percent of girls. This projection is taken from interviews with villagers, but there is not published survey that can support these projections. It is clear that this practice is not an anomaly and it happens quite frequently. When asked why, the response is often that it is not the role of women to have sexual pleasure and if they don’t enjoy sex they are more likely to successfully serve their role of being faithful and serving their husband.
Women get beat. It is socially acceptable to beat your wife. Educated people beat their wives. Women often have little recourse. I am reminded of a conversation I had with an English teacher at their equivalent of a Junior College, he is one of the most educated people in the city. We were talking about American women’s independence and their likely argumentative response if you told them to make your dinner. His response, “Do they want to be beaten.” I was pretty sure that he did not quite understand the use of the word, ‘want’.
Girls are not sent to school with the same regularity as boys. The reason is that it is not their role in society. As a result illiteracy is much higher amongst girls. Girls are less likely to be able to have the tools to be financially independent. Instead they spend most of the day, cleaning the courtyard, spending 3-4 hours at a time making meals and cleaning the dishes for several meals a day. During the wet Season their downtime, is spent doing back breaking cultivation with the use of only a small hoe. In this period the smaller girls take over chores of cooking and cleaning. Girls are frequently married off in their mid teens and usually have children by the age of 18. The social norms reinforce the role that women play in society. Some claim that this is their culture, but I believe that begs the question of whose culture? Are the women and men of this society choosing this structure from the same level of capabilities? Who knew that the capability to give birth would lead to all of these social expectations?
But who knows, maybe the women asking for social reforms are just frigid ice queens, maybe we will look back at these days as the good old days of Burkina Faso- when the divorce rate was low and there was no question about what constitutes a marriage. The point I take from it all is that sometimes being more uncertain of social norms is not such a bad thing. It might produce different challenges, but the new challenges are a welcome relief from the status quo.
The reason for this brief exercise in logic that might be leaving some with the impression of leftist University Speak is to show that this type of thinking has real life consequences. This social norm is propagated again and again; women swallow it and in turn propagate it onto younger generations of women. Here are some of the practical consequences that come from when the social norm mandates that your gender role is to provide for your husband and children:
Ex- scission is the process of female gender mutilation. Often a trusted family member (grandmother) will come in the night time to take the girl just entering puberty, into an unsanitary room where a man uses an unsanitary knife to remove the clitoris and to prevent sex with anyone until marriage, the vagina is sewn shut. In many villages, like the villages that surround where I live, this is the general rule and not the exception. Girls education and empowerment volunteers purport that between 60 -80 percent of girls. This projection is taken from interviews with villagers, but there is not published survey that can support these projections. It is clear that this practice is not an anomaly and it happens quite frequently. When asked why, the response is often that it is not the role of women to have sexual pleasure and if they don’t enjoy sex they are more likely to successfully serve their role of being faithful and serving their husband.
Women get beat. It is socially acceptable to beat your wife. Educated people beat their wives. Women often have little recourse. I am reminded of a conversation I had with an English teacher at their equivalent of a Junior College, he is one of the most educated people in the city. We were talking about American women’s independence and their likely argumentative response if you told them to make your dinner. His response, “Do they want to be beaten.” I was pretty sure that he did not quite understand the use of the word, ‘want’.
Girls are not sent to school with the same regularity as boys. The reason is that it is not their role in society. As a result illiteracy is much higher amongst girls. Girls are less likely to be able to have the tools to be financially independent. Instead they spend most of the day, cleaning the courtyard, spending 3-4 hours at a time making meals and cleaning the dishes for several meals a day. During the wet Season their downtime, is spent doing back breaking cultivation with the use of only a small hoe. In this period the smaller girls take over chores of cooking and cleaning. Girls are frequently married off in their mid teens and usually have children by the age of 18. The social norms reinforce the role that women play in society. Some claim that this is their culture, but I believe that begs the question of whose culture? Are the women and men of this society choosing this structure from the same level of capabilities? Who knew that the capability to give birth would lead to all of these social expectations?
But who knows, maybe the women asking for social reforms are just frigid ice queens, maybe we will look back at these days as the good old days of Burkina Faso- when the divorce rate was low and there was no question about what constitutes a marriage. The point I take from it all is that sometimes being more uncertain of social norms is not such a bad thing. It might produce different challenges, but the new challenges are a welcome relief from the status quo.
