My sister, my enemy
I was in an eatery one afternoon waiting for my lunch to arrive and couldn’t help overhearing a conversation between a man and his female companion.
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It centred on an all-women’s group that was formed to help less privileged women but it suddenly collapsed because one woman repeated a tale that was not supposed to have gone out.
The man gleefully declared that women were, and would always be their own enemies. I had heard that phrase many times and deep down in my heart, I knew he was not far from the truth.
When my close pal got married, and after three years, there was no sign of pregnancy, the women in her husband’s family – mother-in-law and sisters-in-law – became her tormentors.
Eventually, the husband found a mistress (another woman!) who boldly presented herself to his family and fought my friend with the support of the female members of his family.
My friend ultimately left to keep her sanity. Rarely do we see a step-daughter and her step-mother bond easily. The legendary wicked step-mother never goes away. A young woman once confessed to me that she used to add handfuls of salt to her step-mother’s soup hoping to get her thrown out of the house!
In the corporate world, some female bosses are less tolerant towards female subordinates. On the flip side, female subordinates tended to resent female bosses but showed more appreciation and respect to male bosses. A consequence of our socialisation, perhaps.
Young girls from less fortunate homes are more likely to be encouraged by mothers to enter sexual relations with older married men in order to have their needs met. Some female nurses treat pregnant teens with such contempt that they would rather forgo antenatal treatment to avoid being ridiculed, sometimes with fatal consequences.
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Similarly, in instances of rape, the women in the community are the first to lay blame at the doorstep of the female victim. “Why was she swinging her hips so enticingly? Why does she dress provocatively? She brought it on herself…”
When a teen gets pregnant in school, it is the female teachers who first demand her immediate removal so she does not ‘contaminate’ the other female students! Recently in this country, a married female student in one of the nursing schools was dismissed by a female head of the institution because she was pregnant.
The public expressed outrage at the decision and she was reinstated. I began to wonder how other pregnant female students coped in the past. Did they have abortions quietly so they could stay in school in peace?
Perhaps women’s acrimony towards each other is nowhere more pronounced than in the practice of customs and traditions. Cruel widowhood rites are performed by women, on women who need sympathy and understanding. In Ghana, some widows are labelled witches by other women.
It is the older women who prescribe the kind of treatment each widow deserves. Some widows have contracted HIV/AIDS as a direct consequence of some of the widowhood rites. My mother told me that as part of the secret rites of widowhood among one Ghanaian tribe, a thin thread is fastened around the waist of the widow.
She is expected to find a stranger, sleep with him and quietly tear the thread during sex. In one African country, I am told, widows may be asked to drink fluid drawn from their husbands’ corpses to prove their innocence.
This was administered to the widow by other women. I also know that female circumcision, known to have caused, and still causing, untold hardships to young women, is being perpetrated – on the insistence of older women!
I remember once protesting the role of women in traditional practices that dehumanise women and a professor answered that it is because women are the custodians of culture.
So why are widowers treated differently by these women custodians of culture? Why are they never labelled wizards and never accused of having had a hand in the deaths of their wives?
Why is it okay for the men to begin sexual relationships whenever they want after the burial of their wives but the females must wait until after a year, at least? Does society realise that there are sterile men who hide behind their women’s protective faithfulness and look on silently while the women are labelled barren?
Come on women! It is time to look in the mirror and see who we are collectively: sisters! We have to be each other’s keepers. We need to care more, to give ourselves more, to be less judgemental of each other and to drop the cruelty in the name of culture and tradition.
It is time for us to stand up for, by and with, each other.
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The writer is the Head of Public Relations Coordinating Division, ISD
mamley69@hotmail.com
ethel.codjoeamissah@isd.gov.gh