Let’s celebrate the power of women in society

By Njoki Ndung’u

It has never been in doubt to me that women are genuinely powerful and not just because of their unsung role as the real pillar behind many families existence as functional social unit.

That if we educate a woman, we educate a nation is a truism that society is slowly but surely awakening to. Yet women and power denote both positive and negative imagery. In global mythology, the power of women is legendary. Tales abound of brave heroines like Joan of Arc. Others paint women as devious, conniving and greedy like the biblical Jezebel and Delilah or of the temptress Eve of the Garden of Eden.

These women of renown managed to draw empathy for the hapless Ahab, Samson and Adam respectively. But these good men are seldom depicted as spineless, weak, or foolish. History documents the entrenchment of patriarchy partially as a result of the insecurity caused by the female’s ability to procreate located within her womb. Stereotypes were then used to explain away feminism. If you were a strong independent woman then you must be morally inept; you were the root of all evil on earth.

Victorian tradition stressed that women were weak, cowardly and in need of strong masculine protection. Without men, they were supposed to be fish out of water. Even religion has in the past and present cast aspersions on the female sex labelling them inferior, unclean and unfit to lead religious orders. Ironically, the purer superior male leadership in the same institutions willingly grab every cent in donation and tithe from their female majority congregations! In some instances, they use them for quietly coerced sexual gratification.

Modernity should have swept aside such untruthful and ridiculous assertions against the female race. Today we have women presidents, prime ministers, senior clergy, corporate bigwigs and several entries in the Fortune magazine top 500 list. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Hilary Clinton, Wangari Maathai, Oprah Winfrey, and Melinda Gates are iconic international figures. Women have taken their place at the table of partnership with male colleagues. We miraculously juggle careers, investments, family, and community service. We feel proud, respected and successful.

Immodest clothing

But that is until we are confronted with a headline like one that appeared three days ago. When I first saw the story, I thought perhaps it was a belated April Fool’s Day farce. But it was, for real! "A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes…" And here I was, all this time thinking that earthquakes are caused by volcanoes or shifting fault lines and failing all other explanation, by divine power.

Googling the story, I found a fitting description on a website called HowStuffworks.com. It states that ‘an earthquake is a vibration that travels through the earth’s crust, and is one of the most terrifying phenomena that nature can whip up. We generally think of the ground we stand on as "rock-solid" and completely stable. An earthquake can shatter that perception instantly, and often with extreme violence…there is still a certain amount of mystery surrounding them."

Wow! And someone thinks women are responsible for this? Actually this power supposedly exclusively belongs to women who wear immodest clothing and behave badly. This is according to the Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi, an Islamic cleric. His assertion followed soon after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned a quake would hit soon, forcing 12 million dwellers of Tehran to evacuate to safer ground.

In the cleric’s warped brand of seismology, women who wear fashionable clothes and make up – which causes youth to go astray and have extra marital affairs – are solely responsible for the calamities in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries. Surfing the net, I found misogynist websites which document ridiculous claims on what else is blamable on women around the world. Apparently, here, women (all women, not just those who are fashionably dressed), are the cause of global warming, male infidelity, their own rapes and violent sexual behaviour of males and any resultant pregnancies!

Self-respecting man

They are solely responsible for overpopulation, under-population, contraception failure, abortions, infertility, prostitution, promiscuity, gold digging, trapping men, food shortages, food surplus, road accidents, poor performance of children at school and for whatever else goes wrong in the world.

Talk about being powerful! One particularly authoritative webpage states that real men see their women only as their daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters-in law or in the alternative as whores, concubines and illegal mistresses.

These are women a self-respecting man is not prepared to accept in public because it is not convenient for him.

I know there is something very wrong with this picture. It portrays men on this website as incapable of respect or of having solid values and responsibility which are the key pillars of power. This does not ring true of many men that I know. It may, however, reflect an accurate description of some; like the Ayatollah Kazem and that other fellow of Maendeleo Ya Wanaume fame; both give men a bad name. Fortunately, I know that women on the other hand, at least the ones I know, see men as partners, champions and success stories. When our brothers stumble, we know they are human and we are keen to offer our support. More Power to us!