Sexism and the Ugly Black Frog

Dear Grandmother, you’ve been gone for so long. I loved to affectionately call you Yayo. You were very dear to my heart and gave me a firm foundation. You did not have much but you shared much with me. When I was terrified of menstruation, you showed me how to manage the monthly blood-letting entrance into womanhood. I’ve grown up a lot since. Menstruation has paused. I look a lot like you. By the aid of my only daughter, I now have two young granddaughters. I spoil them, wishing that their lives will be better than mine.

As I’ve grown wiser, I’ve learned deep lessons about sexism in Ghana. As much as things have changed since your departure, many things still remain the same. Gender equality is still far off from smell and touch. A few women have succeeded in making a token presence into leadership positions and we’re supposed to be content with that just like you were content working on your little okro farm, for which you died.

Women are the majority yet in the minority. Last year, they counted the people in this country. The results were fascinating; there are more females than males. But our majority status has not helped us much. The work-life of women, for the most part, remains the same, just like in your days. Unlike in your days, girls go to school now. I did! Yet, many brilliant girls remain glued to the mommy-truck, hubby-train and worst of all, the timidity-bus. Timidity zaps any traces of confidence and breeds content and satisfaction for low status.

Yayo, sexism is endemic in Ghana. It is to the bone; hard core! Bigotry toward females is deep. Chauvinism, machismo, discrimination is still rife. On the totem pole of privilege, on the food chain of power, the male is still supreme. Females and the handicapped – cripples, mentally ill, poor and all others – are low on the food chain. Culture that is rooted in dogmatism, bias, narrow-mindedness and a predisposition for prejudice is deep.

You would recall the experiences I shared with you several years ago in a dream when I was living in the Whiteman’s country. I felt a deep hurt when some skinny Whitemen with few teeth remaining in their stinky mouths drove past me and yelled, ‘Niger! Go home’, and sped off. On numerous occasions, white people looked down on me because of the black colour of my skin. It never made sense to me. That was bigotry. That was prejudice. That was racism.

So I determined to work very hard and be better than the best Whiteman who crossed my path. Yayo, in the past few weeks, I’ve heard things in my own country that have shocked me. My womanhood has been ridiculed in the most careless way, in the same way the colour of my skin was an issue in the Whiteman’s country.

Yayo, recently, the wife of the most long-serving head of state of Ghana, who planted himself onto the country for nineteen-and-a-half years, has gathered boldness that is devoid of timidity to express interest in jumping into her husband’s shoes. You might never have heard of her. Her name is Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings. She’s on a quest for the flag-bearership of their family party – the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

As a key player on the corridor and bedroom of power, Konadu has had decades of learning to be bold. She has experienced bold; she has lived bold with a soft cushion wrapped around her. At the beginning of the rule of Flt Lt Rawlings, Konadu was far from being bold.

Yayo, this is the first time a female from a major political party has jumped into the fray on a bold quest for the presidency. I don’t care much for her but that is beside the point. What is shocking is the extent to which her announcement has yanked out closeted sexists and chauvinists out of their warm closets and bedrooms. They’ve entered the public sphere and shamelessly spew out tons of trash about why Ghana will never be ready for a female president. There’s an explosion of careless sexist remarks and debates in public and in private discourse.

Konadu’s bid for the presidency has laid bare the ugly stinky depraving crazy depths of sexism in our country. People are talking openly, freely and foolishly ‘by-heart’ about what they deeply believe to be the proper place of females in our society. These ‘by-heart’ loose talkers are on radio stations – in English and the vernacular, at beer bars and in informal conversations. They are literates and non-literates.

I’ve heard people I’ve always respected, some so-called well-educated folks with impressive Masters Degrees, talk so loosely and illogically about why a woman cannot become President of Ghana. And they say these things to display deeply held convictions.

Some of the people who make calls to radio stations to let off their sexist steam smack of bitterness at the thought and mention of a woman as President of Ghana. The craziest sexist comment I heard on a leading agenda-setting radio station was: ‘President Mills is setting a record. A mere woman is challenging him for the presidency.’ Yayo, this sentence could easily be re-written and the word woman replaced with ‘goat’, ‘antelope’, or ‘cow’.

What upsets me the most, Yayo, is when I hear people who are so limited in their way of thinking not sparing their raw non-iodized thoughts about why the female gender was not made for leadership but solely for other matters. Listening to such thoughts makes it obvious that there are many in our society – both males and females – with a desperate need to overcome ignorance and beg for redemption.

Some of them go as far as to quote the Bible and the Quran to support their assertions of what they consider to be the woman’s place; anywhere between the kitchen and the bedroom. Yayo, I think that some of such people are afraid of something. They’re afraid that when ‘herstory’ is added to history, the power of the shine of the male story will be dimmed. They forget that there’s enough room under God’s sky for all of His creation.

Without a doubt, in this society, women are on a mission impossible when they dare to dream of rising to elected positions. I wonder, are females the mules of Ghana? Were females born to sit on the side-lines of our country and function as cheer-leaders for men? I’ve learned that behind every successful man is a surprised woman with eyes popped open and wondering, ‘Where in the world did my life go?’

Yayo, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that Ghana must have a serious national conversation about sexism in. Societies that are underdeveloped are the ones that keep their female folks as servers, helpers and bed-mates and forget that females have brains too. We must therefore nurture females to come out of traditional gender stereotypical roles to become what the Almighty God created them to be because we need all hands on deck, so to speak, to develop Ghana.

Yayo, looking at the situation of Ghana 54 years after Independence when only men have been in the driver’s seat and simply dodge potholes instead of fixing them, one would have thought that our sorry situation would be a wake-up call to try Grandmother Eve’s descendants.