Guest Columnist , Guest Columnist
THERE IS a high level of agitation bordering on rage coming even out of some of our most decent and beloved men-folk which is making me understand more deeply, the meaning of the 'male back-lash'. Aspects of this came out in a recent evaluation of Jamaica's performance on the goal of promoting Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, Millennium Development Goal #3. In that particular discussion, the group agreed to disagree, but generally, in discussions about gender and women's rights there is a high rush of adrenaline on all sides which makes conversation almost impossible.
The argument from the perspective of the men in general goes something like this: "If gender is about men and women, how can you be talking about the empowerment of women? Isn't it obvious that it is the men who are marginalised? Look at what is happening in education, hardly any young men graduating from university. Can't you see that it is the lazy, tough-back boys who are giving the problems in the society sitting on the street corners, idle with nothing to do having no ambition but to turn don, drive big car and 'chuck' badness. Some of them even looking like women now, plaiting hair, wearing earrings. This talk about gender is really all about women wanting to take over society, that is what you so-called feminists really want". And on and on.
In this vein, Michael Burke writing in the February 12 Daily Observer ("Kingston Club, black members and equal rights for men") expressed the view that "equal rights for women now means more rights for them than men, which is unfair. And the men are beginning to fight back".
FIGHTING BACK
And a lot of that 'fighting back' fuels the gender-based violence against women we are experiencing in society today.
We have to find a way to reason about the issues and we need some basic understanding, the first being that we all have to acknowledge that under existing gender relations men, and women more so, are hurting in one way or another. Most women, including feminists, are deeply concerned about what is happening to our men and boys in society and spend many hours raising up and strengthening their loved ones and society even though women are in general under-valued and less-counted in society. As women we do not accept this and are determined to change this for the benefit of ourselves and the future of the whole human family.
Burke, in his article, has led us to consider how discrimination against women was rooted in our history of slavery and colonialism.
He revealed to us that part of the history of how Black men and women had to fight institutionalised racism in Jamaica. Racial exclusion barred black men from membership in the Kingston Cricket Club up to 60 years ago. Today, sexist discrimination still excludes women from membership and the black man, intent to 'fight-back' women's rights does not see the systemic connection in our common alienation, because, neither of us as man or woman is the enemy.
Reading him, I wondered whether he would have been as vehement in his crusade if the Minister of Sports were a white Jamaican, say like Sister Carolyn Gomes and not Sister Portia Simpson Miller, a black woman from the working class, confronting the historic barrier of race, class and gender. For gender is a barrier between us. It refers to the roles and relationships that are constructed between men and women in a specific society or culture. It encodes and institutionalises in most societies unequal value, opportunity and life chances between men and women with women and girls being subordinate to men and boys in most societies. So our culture tells us that women's rightful and primary role is to take care of the family and that the public world of business, politics and sports like cricket are really the domain of men.
That these are stereotypes of how men and women actually live in society, for example, or that women play, know and enjoy cricket, has little impact on rigid traditional masculinist thinking. In the same way, the fact that the majority of men have never been able to play the male breadwinner role, does not alter the fact that they see themselves primarily through those gendered lens, nor does it inhibit women from pressuring them to fulfil that role.
SUFFERING
So both men and women suffer from the gender system, women more so than men. The call for gender equality is therefore, first and foremost a call for an end to male privileging in society and for both women and men to have and exercise the same rights, responsibilities, access and control of resources in society as men do.
It is a call for men to wake up to the reality that the pressure on them is not 'caused' by women, but by the gender system which on the one hand privileges them, and on the other, alienates them from tapping into their humanity. However, since gender inequality intersects with inequalities of race/colour/shade, class position and other manifestations of social deprivation, we have to struggle beyond equality to look at issues of social equity to look at the matter of social justice for the majority of women and men in society.
The call for women's empowerment is linked to this broader agenda. It is a recognition that for the change and transformation to take place, we as women have to take stock and struggle to enlarge our choices in society. Empowerment requires us to take action to remove the power that men have to constrain our choices.
It therefore has implications for actions inside our homes and families and our men have a crucial role in defining that new path towards gender and social equity.
Women's empowerment rests on the mobilisation of resources of all kinds, including the resources of power and rests on using our achievements as building blocks on a path and in a process of sustainable social development for women, our families and for society. How are we as Jamaicans doing in the area of promoting gender equity and women's empowerment?
It is time for the assessment.
Linnette Vassell is a consultant on development issues and can be reached at e-mail cvas@cwjamaica.com.
