Patriarchy in a typical African setting has seen the female gender been discriminated in almost every sphere of life – governments, business, religious and so on. But as patriarchy been all that bad?
Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressors and callous exploiters (VT 1994).
The sacrifice by this men was not accidental, it is an offshoot of the so-called patriarchal system. Patriarchy, according to the Encyclopedia of Sociology is defined as, “the totality of male domination and its pervasiveness in women’s lives.”
More refined definitions and perspectives have been given radical, staunch and electronic feminists. They see patriarchy as a system created by men, for men only at the expense of the women – no doubt, some of the perspectives being highlighted by these school of thoughts are true; the society is rightly shaped by the thoughts and ideologies of one half of the population, men while the other half, the women, have been subjugated for centuries and made to be of no value.
The anguish of a patriarchal system is effervescent in some cultures on the African continent that all some after enduring pains of childbirth is “It is a girl?” Patriarchy in a typical African setting has seen the female gender been discriminated in almost every sphere of life – governments, business, religious and so on. But as patriarchy been all that bad? Yes, is the answer you hear from gender extremists, who pose in form of feminists, and people who consciously or unconsciously chose to distort history.
The reality is while women have not equally shared in the greater glories of human existence, they have also been disproportionately spared from some of its gloomiest horrors.
Patriarchy has not been all that good for the men, it comes along with his ugly, bad and enormous sacrifice for the gender believed the system was designed for. According to the Daily Mail, 76% of suicides are men, 85% of homeless people are men, 70% of homicide victims are men, men serve 64% longer in prison and are 3.4 times more likely to be imprisoned than women when both committed the same crime.
In a Yoruba setting, the man offsets the child’s hospital delivery bill, buys all it is needed for the child and mother, foots the naming ceremony bill, but who do visitors give money to? The woman. This is one of the many narratives people tend to omit when labelling patriarchy.
Over 100 soldiers – all men, lost their lives last week, defending Nigeria. The unborn children might not get to find out this kind of story, but ceteris paribus, they will get to hear the narratives of how the gender these soldiers represented is oppressive.
Just like any other ideology, patriarchy needs adjustment, refinement, fine-tuning, rejigging, tweak, re-tweaking, but no, the concept is endemic in the African set-up, and when it comes to Africa, no need for looking before leaping.