Tackling Gender Inequality: The Importance of Redefining Gender Roles At The Home Level

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Gender Inequality is a huge challenge to women, society, and national development today. Although societies have evolved, day in day out, there are manifestations of the gap between men and women.

A study by UN Population Fund (UNFPA) reveals that Gender Inequality remains an insurmountable obstacle for many women’

Gender-based discrimination still thrives because of deep-rooted systems that have become difficult to tackle as they have been long fuelled at the lowest levels; the home, with the unequal treatment given to boys and girl, which has advanced into schools, where girls are not given the same opportunities for development as boys; into workplaces because of huge pay gaps; and at a national level because although progress has been made when it comes to women and the significant role they play, society has still not warmed up to the prospects of having more women in management and leadership positions.

"Tackle Gender Discrimination from the home"

Why are women perceived to have less power than men? We believe again, that this has got a lot to do with our home systems, especially, in African homes.

Girls and boys have been handed distinct roles usually to the detriment of the former. For instance home chores like sweeping, washing, scrubbing and cooking are considered as typically women duties; an obligation they cannot escape and have to learn to accept willingly or the hard way. 

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How does this gender-bias affect girls? The effects of this discrimination is not only physical but psychological because many of these girls grow up upholding the belief that ‘they are only good for chores’ and ‘have been made for these chores’, while their male counterparts are given opportunities to get ahead. 

This kind of indoctrination, that girls are made for the home, undeniably makes them feel less powerful. And it is frightening because now, it isn’t only their male counterparts who think of them as less powerful or capable, but they themselves accept the role they are made to play, grow into it, and even start questioning the need for these systems and barriers to be broken.

A lot of this ‘protection’ of a bullshit system by women themselves can be seen on social media platforms especially Twitter where women rally in ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ after men who tweet things like “A woman is worthless if she can’t cook or clean.”

Perhaps if we tackle this gender issue from where it begins—the home; perhaps if boys are taught in our traditional homes that cooking and cleaning is a human being’s job and not a woman’s; if boys are taught to take responsibility for the washing of their own underpants; if boys are taught that the kitchen is not a birthright of girls but a place to make food to feed one’s self when hungry, they will not only learn for themselves these very important life needs, but they will also be enlightened and educated (because apparently, formal education is not doing much to break these barriers) and gender discrimination wouldn’t be a gab this wide.

In the same way, if girls are taught that cooking, and cleaning is a basic human obligation and not the duty of a woman, if girls are given equal opportunities as boys, then perhaps they will grow up feeling just as equal to their male counterparts. Equal enough to have the same rights. Equal enough to feel just as powerful as men. Equal enough to take leadership positions. Equal enough to accept that they are strong, confident and capable.

If it’s in the home training, then it needs to be tackled at the preschooler level where it is still possible to learn, unlearn and relearn.

~ V