BRING BACK OUR GIRLS

"Bring back our girls" is the song on the lips of mothers in Borno State of Nigeria who despite the fact that they had been deprived the opportunity to be educated still chose to send their own girl-child to school in an environment where education is considered a waste.

Two weeks down the line and all we can hear loudly is SILENCE. The over 200 young girls abducted from a school in Chibok, Borno state are still yet to be found. Isn't it obvious what value our dearly beloved country places on our fragile feminine lives?

It is true that when mothers cry, a nation cries. Who can quantify the pain that struck the hearts of the mothers who probably saw their girls off to school the morning of that fateful day only to be faced with the reality of their missing child by noon? Who can tell what pain, hunger, abuse and torture these girls might be facing right now?

Talk to us dear government, your silence is so deafening and your actions so inactive. Its time this oppression ends, be it political, gender, economic or social related.

I join thousands of women today to say "BRING BACK OUR GIRLS"

EQUAL RIGHTS! MYTH OR REAL?

Women and girls are not commodities and must be treated as human beings with equal rights to those of men. Those were the words of Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund as he addressed politicians from across the world at a conference in Stockholm.

It is good to know that there are still men out there who would advocate for equal treatment for both men and women alike. Shouldn’t we be accorded equal rights to employment, earnings, and positions in the political, economic and social affairs of our dear country?

Why won’t a girl be made the most senior prefect in school? Must she always be next to a boy? Why would you rather listen and harken to a man when it comes to matters of decision? And relegate a woman to the background on important decisions?

In Nigeria, it is observed that the womanhood is reduced to a mere infidel and a second-class citizen, hence, there is the commonality of general belief system that the best place for women is in the ‘Kitchen’. This trend has brought about tremendous misrepresentation of women right at the level of the family down to the circular society.

Unfortunately the Nigerian society is patriarchal in nature which is a major feature of a traditional society. It is a structure of a set of social relations with material base which enables men to dominate women. Women are therefore discriminated upon from, in most cases, acquiring formal education, mistreated and perpetually kept as house-help; the average Nigerian woman is seen as an available object for prostitution, forced marriage, street hawking, instrument of wide-range trafficking and a misfit in the society. Thus, the purported irrelevance associated with the status of women in society has merely reduced an average woman to an inferior commodity.

Somehow how I do not blame the society for what they have done to us and for what they didn’t do, I blame us “women” who have chosen to stay put where society has put us and has refused to fight for what could be ours. No one will bring honor to your doorstep GIRLS, you have to work for it, you have to earn it, you have to strongly contest to be recognized as a woman here. The man on the other hand has little to do, their physical build alone affords them positions. This is why I give it up to women in this country and beyond who have accorded themselves names

No matter what situation you are now WOMAN, get literate, learn a trade, get a job, do whatever it takes to get to that place of honor and recognition and help others see through your light. They say it is hard being a man, I agree but I say it is harder being a woman.

If you are a woman out there struggling to be someone, do not stop, you just might have reached the silver lining.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it is possible.” - Rich De Vos

FEMALE ASSAULT 1

Hi All, I am back this morning after a splendid short Easter break and I want to use this avenue to wish everybody a happy Easter. I have a very funny but annoying story for us this morning, but before I continue to the story as carried by Sahara reporters, I like to ask why a man would claim to be superior to his female counterpart and then stoop down from his high manly horse and assault a helpless woman. Below is a funny story of a police man assaulting two women because of "Fish".....LOL

PICTURE FROM THE BRUTAL SCENE

A police officer with the Mopol 20 in Lagos identified as Tafa Mohammed was filmed brutalizing 2 women at Lewis Street, Lafiaji, Obalende, Lagos Island, after one of the ladies, a street food vendor, refused to sell him fish to finish up his beer.
According to Sahara Reporters, the food seller was said to have declined to sell fish alone, except to those buying food with it, a vendor policy that angered the policeman. The policeman got really angry and targeted a female customer who was buying food from the same vendor and pulled the women into muddy water where he physically assaulted her. It was reported that the food seller was badly injured also.

This is so sad and demeaning of our policemen and also of our men. I say men because u are first a man before a policeman. Were there no men eating there before he chose to mount on a woman to express his grievances?  I hear the officer has been arrested and he is being investigated but I trust it won't go beyond that. These are the kind of harassment women go through everyday and the perpetrators of these deeds end up going  free and unpunished. This makes it a circle, it keeps going round and round and endlessly. Women when would we learn to fight back? Who fights the woman's cause? This would be a topic for another day.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has built up around her; she must reverence that woman within her which struggles for expression" - Margaret Sanger.

DEAD DREAMS

STOP DREAMING, WAKE UP & START ACTING

As a child, I dreamt of so many beautiful things, I dreamt of singing in front of millions of people, I dreamt of acting, I dreamt of being a great inspirational writer, I dreamt of being a renowned producer and director..........dreams dreams dreams........ it goes on and on and on.
The truth is we dream and plan a live for ourselves, beautiful lives indeed, many of us even take the next step to actualizing our dreams but what happens next? We get married, we start having children and you get so carried away nursing our marriage, husbands and children that we forget to even sleep let alone dream. I have even seen and heard of situations where the husband insists the wife plays "stay home trophy wives". He probably is so egoistic that he fears his wife might get more successful than he is and so he helps dig the graves for their wives dreams and personally seal up the grave and decorates it so beautifully that the wife almost doesn't remember she ever had a dream- that's what I call "Trophy wifehood"

The woman is built in such a way that she can successfully handle family life and career perfectly, even though our society doesn't encourage us living our dreams.
I want to encourage us this morning to go back to our beds, dream, stand up and start acting not regarding what the society has to say. It is time we eliminate our limitations and break free from the shackles that guises in form of family to tie us down and shine out in our different capacities like precious stones. It is never too late girlfriends, and it is never too early to start living our dreams.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”
― Coco Chanel, The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman

GENERAL INTRODUCTION Continues.............

 Hi Beautiful People,

Hope you all had a splendid weekend. This morning, I like to buttress my points in my earlier written introduction.

 Women are victims of injustice in traditional African culture both because of what the society did to them and also because of what the society did not do to them. The society is responsible for the position of women today because of the barriers and limitations they have carved out for the women folk, depriving them of same opportunities as the men are given in the society. Boys grow up knowing that they had to be strong, hardworking and wise so that they could take good care of their wives, children and society. Girls grow up knowing that they had to be hardworking and submissive so that they could find good husbands who would take good care of them. In other words, it was up to their future husbands to make their lives fulfilled. Consequently, they are not allowed the liberty to develop their initiative and creativity which will enable them make choices that would result in to optimal desired self-actualization and satisfaction.

Injustices against women are on the increase. According to John Bwakali, chairperson of the Kenya Voluntary Development Association, ‘in South Africa, rape occurs every thirty-six seconds’ and ‘in the United States, a woman is physically abused every nine seconds’ while ‘in India, five thousand women are murdered annually through dowry murder rituals’ thus ‘sadly, these tragic events are but the tip of the iceberg’. It is not uncommon for teenage girls to be married off through compulsion and for some widows to be inherited along with other 'possessions' by the next man in the family and even by a woman in some cultures like the Igbo culture in Nigeria where the widow of the last man in the family is married by a woman who now gives her out in marriage for procreation purpose. The issue of wife beating is not far-fetched in our modern day society as almost every day we hear cries of maltreated women around the neighborhoods. Many girls in most African societies drop out of school because preference is given to boys. This onslaught of violence seems to be unstoppable. Yet this despicable violence is just few of the many injustices against women.

Women in today's world, especially in Africa, are given very little opportunity compared to their male counterpart. It is no wonder that gender equality has become such a major international issue. However, it becomes disturbing to note that gender inequality still persists despite all the attention given to it. In the African context, gender inequality is worse than it used to be decades ago. Evidently, westernization may have brought many benefits but gender equality was not one of them. While men in many African countries are on the forefront of political and corporate leadership, women are relegated and left to operate at the background. 
At this point, I guess we all know where I am coming from and my aim for this blog.... Have a wonderful day people.

Note: If you have a story to share or you just want to express yourself and tell your story or report an incident in your area, you can email me on maryannaboshi@gmail.com.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself" -Thich Nhat Hanh

 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Supposedly, as children grow from infants to young adults, they tend to steadily appreciate the social segregation which places them among either boys or girls. Consequently they will begin to ask questions such as; what does the division between the sexes mean to people in different places and times, and how are biological distinctions made symbolically and socially relevant? It appears people such as the Yoruba ethnic nation tend to naturalize differences between boys and girls, men and women; however the dimensions of such acculturation amongst various ethnic groups can be said to be culture specific.

It would appear natural and mild to say that in different societies such as in Africa, there are ancient as well as generationally transferred and culturally assimilated stipulations as regards to the roles of boys and girls, men and women in each society are expected to play. For instance, in a nomadic Fulani community, boys grow up to learn that their place would be to herd the family livestock, sometimes hunt for game, and assist in securing the family holdings, while girls fetch firewood from nearby woods, water from streams and springs, milk the cow, assist their mothers and older women in cooking and most domestic chores. This routine goes on and on till marriage comes along and young men becomes husbands and heads of their nuclear families. People in various societies live according to the norms stipulated by their own society and less according to their individual aspirations. Traditional African culture is not fair to women, one can argue that the focal point of this supposition is that African societal norms dictates that a woman's place is in the background or worse still in the kitchen. In contemporary Nigeria, this has not changed much as man’s place is still at the fore front of the various economic, political, industrial, social, commercial sectors and in general handling of the material needs of his family. In the traditional African society, both male and female, young and adult were playing their different roles towards social harmony and progress but the female roles are considered to be inferior to that of her male counterpart thereby making her inherently subject to and dependent on the man. Albeit, it is important to note that women’s roles though different to those of men, are not inferior to them. 

QUOTE OF THE DAY:  "A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform" - Diane Mariechild