Never speak of marriage as an accomplishment for women

It’s the 21st century and women still have to contend with the question of marriage and childbirth.

We have been conditioned to think that a woman cannot be complete without a man and marriage is the trophy women get when they have been good. So, while women can train to be anything, there is this parallel course they are expected to attend concurrently, the one on being good wife material. These qualities of being a good wife as perpetrated by both men and women alike include all forms of servitude and submissiveness.

Irrespective of her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, a wife material should be able to knead ugali for a community of 50 people to gain the honourable title of our wife.

She should be able to multi-task – cleaning the house, doing laundry, taking care of the kids, and sating the husband’s needs in between.

If she has an eight to five job then she has to remotely manage the house and ensure everything is ready for her husband when he arrives home, for her husband is a trophy that she has to defend each year in order to stay married.

Any laxity on her part and the trophy is taken away from her. Men in this context are portrayed as a rare commodity and any woman who is lucky enough to have one must do everything possible to keep him at least to stop him from being snatched from her by millions of others who are scrambling to get even a half a piece of a man.

She must, therefore, revere her husband to the highest degree, especially in the presence of his friends, and only fall short of calling him ‘my lord’ because many women are apparently ogling for her place.

Unfortunately, we have been deeply indoctrinated into this marriage fallacy that even the most educated of us still champions for it – a girl is more honourable when she has the prefix Mrs before her name.

While marriage is good it may not be the best option for everyone – man or woman – and this is a choice each one of us should be allowed to make.

If we care to look around we will realise that there exists a breed of women who were not created for marriage - there are those who are comfortable living their lives in solitude and then there’s the other breed who gets bored with a partner after a while and so they drop and pick as they go.

The term slut which is used to shame sexually liberated women simply means a woman with the morals of a man. While in women this is a vice that should never be tolerated, in man it is celebrated and even though the term ‘rake’ is supposed to conjure the same sentiments as those evoked with the term ‘slut’, in men it remains some sort of an achievement.

They can cross boundaries to build amorous relationships with married women and widows alike yet they will still walk a bride down the aisle who will be expected to be faithful to him.

Didn’t they say what was good for the goose is good for the gander too? Why then do we ridicule women who choose to remain single for whatever reason? In the 21st century where we strive for gender equality, it would be unfair to still force women into marriage.

Let women just like men marry because they want to.