Judging a woman's worth based on virginity is archaic

Every transaction has a currency. In politics, they say the currency of business is loyalty to the boss. It would help if you sang their anthem even when and where it is unnecessary provided there is a conduit that can let them know. In terms of relationships, it is said your word is your worth. In the market place of course we do business using money, whichever currency one is holding provided the seller accepts it.

I am persuaded to argue that the currency for a woman is her purity. In the years past when we were still crude and needed to verify that a girl was whole at the time of marriage, there was a need to provide proof of what transpired.

It is said that the family of the groom waited till a white fabric bearing blood stain was returned to them as proof that the hymen was intact in the woman that they would now henceforth take in as a wife. The blood was a girl’s worth. If she had lost it elsewhere she would be considered a reject not worthy of any decent man’s home as a first wife.

Life was manual. The world of humans has easily digitised and moved from manual verification to some more emphatic evidence of sin. Recently while catching up with the boys in the village, I gathered with unchallengeable confidence that the value of a girl is now not about having an intact hymen, the measure has been relaxed to the number of births a woman has registered.

The boys in the village say that they would love to marry someday – they analyse the value of women in the market space always sniffing the possibility that they might have given birth. In this biting lack, I gathered that in the village in their pursuit to cut down costs, they are more willing to do business with women who have had babies than those who are single and childless. Apparently, the more children a woman has outside wedlock the cheaper she becomes in the marriage marketplace with men lining up to just pick and choose from the desperate lot.

A woman with a child is naturally on the lookout for a place to settle and the men are aware that their value has dipped to near nothing. They are the easiest to seduce because they are aware that they are holding the weaker end of the stick in the bargain.

According to the young men, the girls who have no children have a high market value because they are perceived to be the new versions of pure. It is therefore easier to marry a woman who has had a child with another man than one with a sweet sixteen belly. Further prying on the young men indicates that there are a lot of women who are not only looking for a husband but a place to belong.

Once women have children, they are left actively searching for a place to settle and anything to call a husband provided he can show interest in the furtherance of reproduction. Such women are willing to go the extra mile to make a marriage work, including fending for themselves and their children.