A Discussion of Gender Roles

By: Stephen Ainsah-Mensah

Boyhood days can be full of fun but also full of pronouncements about life that may prove masculinity yet indicate dangerous silliness. It is true to say that masculinity may be good or bad depending on the nature of statements or practices related to it. But a boy who is a fan of masculinity could endanger the integrity of females if his utterances are not really trifles but matters of great importance insofar as they tend to encourage gender discrimination. Consider a boy who used to say that he would never ever allow a girl to be better than him in any kind of matters about life except for home chores. Asked why he said so, his answer, which happened to be brash, was: “because I’m a boy.” There is this other boy who said his job for the future is to marry and take care, in whichever way, of his beautiful wife, and that this is a duty naturally bestowed on him as a “man”. When asked: “what about if it should happen that your beautiful wife should rather take care, in whichever way, of you,” his answer came edgily: “because I’m a man, and a man shouldn’t allow a woman to take care of him.” Suppose a girl said a similar thing about a boy and her impatient conclusion upon being interrogated was: “because I’m a girl….” it is obvious that she would be considered a weakling of sorts, not an example to be followed by many a people, especially males. While no masculinity is here categorically stated by the two boys, it is presupposed. Now, this fruitless audacity, these, in fact, vacuous conclusions, have found ways to harden into a pervasive reality in male-female affairs; hence, they serve as dangerous precedents for many males who may be enchanted about macho ways. Many males, in any case, may not utter such outright conclusions but possibly will profess superiority compared to females for no good reason except for sheer machismo. And the problem here is that manliness, originally identified as a symbol of strength – and of which the macho man proves to be a clear representation – is further equated with competence and made to decide, as if like an axiom, capacities and talents between man and woman. Man is wrong!

Ask yourself: “when was it accepted as a given that woman was equal to man regarding access to jobs, pay-offs, assessment of skills, leadership roles, and so on?” The answer is likely to be pretty discouraging despite the fact that some progress has been made in this direction. Gender discrimination is quite entrenched. Dislodging it requires the invention of a new man. His vision of life needs the unbroken and, in fact, equal contribution of woman. Woman has to also play her part in seeing to it that her dignity is not eroded by the unfair acts of man towards her. In public, she needs to shelve her alleged tenderness and docility. Again - and this is very important – she ought to challenge the privileges bestowed on masculinity while proving to be sincere, logical and steadfast in her strivings for equality.

For so long, the general view of man and woman has been one-sided; man is supposed to be the giver, woman the recipient - meaning woman, for the most part, has to constantly look to man for succour. Momentous progress has been made in societies that care to understand that abilities and talents are equally demonstrated by man and woman despite some dissimilar areas in practising them. But the dissimilarities do not provide excuses for downgrading the efforts of woman since that generates gender conflicts and distrusts, which are unhealthy for growth and development. If there is the danger of missing the logic about human competence, it lies precisely in the point that man tends to equate physical strength and its continuous application as the most important arbiter of proficiency. The issue of health, which should have been given a far more important consideration, is usually not. It is obvious that man draws discriminatory conclusions from non-discriminatory data. Differences in bodily attributes between man and woman are not definitive proofs of differences in the ability to perform. A man who thinks otherwise fails to grasp knowledge in its right perspective. Man falls short of the realization that personal abilities are constantly being shaped by familial experiences, social networks, innate attributes, mental range, and so on. In addition, the discriminatory man feels deep inside him that the dress code of woman – such as the skirt, dress, stockings, high-heel shoes, bra, among others – signifies tenderness, femininity. While a man may be physically stronger than a woman – as it is usually the case – it does not mean that man is as well healthier than woman. Physical strength may give rise to good health, but it does not necessarily mean so.

Proponents of the thesis of physical strength prefer to hold on to the sin of gender discrimination any time they attach labels to woman: woman has a tender body unsuitable for a workplace that demands aggressiveness in the face of competition, woman is not daring in her dispositions; woman prefers homemaking, fashion and beauty to the challenging requirements of business.

At the risk of diverging from some male colleagues, it needs to be stated, quite frankly, that what is lacking in the above contentions is simple logic. A man who prefers to stick to personal reflections that are shut from painstaking observations about the qualities, personality of woman (tapped and untapped), is a dangerous man because he is prepared to claim, time and again, that he is superior to woman. Evidence to the contrary does not please him or enable him to change his mind. Man has to be careful any time he contends - or tends to contend - that the very nature of man makes him more suitable for tasks, duties, far more than woman. In fact, the growing of this bogus argument, and – worse of all – its entrenchment has weakened the willpower of a lot of women who otherwise would have liked to compete for positions or activities that could likely enhance their respective proficiencies. A woman who deserves her self-esteem but is unwilling to over-prove it tends to settle on the issue of fashion, beauty, homemaking, designing, and the rest. Once woman recedes from the field of competition, from public tasks or duties, one must understand. She refuses to be the target of negative labels from her male counterpart, whether openly or covertly.

Man echoes the point – or implies – that woman must over-perform or that she is inclined to under-perform. He is inclined to say: “It is all woman’s fault. She has not tried hard enough to catch up or be equal to man.”

In all fairness, catching up, working for equality, is not merely an individual striving. It also requires breaking down the barriers that deter woman from living the conscience of dynamism. In short, institutional barriers are at stake. What does a man whose superiority instincts prompt him to disdain the competing efforts of woman really want to show? To tell the truth, his utterances are inconsistent with a culture that hopes to achieve commonsense results in the areas of goodness, health, education, business, and so on.

As long as gender discrimination torments the psyche and stalls the motivation of woman, society is in an imperfect condition. Skills and talents are underutilized, untapped, wasted. And as no massive institutional improvements ameliorate woman’s condition, she seeks advocacy and, sometimes, formal confrontation with man through a new vision of woman styled feminism.

The feminist or feminist institutions are couched in the principle that a fresh grasp of what a woman stands for is necessary to remedy the difficulties that woman faces in relation to man. Rightly, most feminists choose to change their respective appearances and personalities to connote courage, determination, and an on-the-go lifestyle, while they, at the same time, devise a feminist vocabulary, new verbalisms, to warn that they are in the business of challenging and squarely confronting the masculinity of their male counterparts. Yet, feminists ought to be careful not to allow the scourge of passionate revenge to guide their respective consciences and actions any time some of its members occupy positions of leadership. One can imagine a situation where a feminist happens to be a powerful manager. Unable to withstand the historically discriminatory practices of her counterpart – man – she chooses the path of revenge, which involves strange disciplinary actions, selective punishment, autocratic conduct, exclusion of qualified males to skilled jobs, etc. What happens here is an emotional adventure into the opposing territory resided by perceived adversaries, namely men. The nature of the female manager’s actions, at this point, is, as one can see, emotionally charged. Her return to a normal sense of equality with man demands a seasoned evaluation of matters at hand, whether they pertain to man or woman. She needs the service of logic to help her liberate the conscience of vindictiveness. Wherever possible, she must purge herself of uncontrollable passion, else she will do, or perhaps, overdo, what her male counterpart used to do – discrimination, pomposity, narrow-mindedness, yet unaware of this kind of cognitive disorder. She must, in short, be careful not to trap herself in reversed discrimination, and, thereby, win for herself a whole lot of adversaries.

It is, at this point, fine to state that the possibility of surmounting gender inequality also exists in a source other than feminist activities. This source is the family. Modern families are shrinking in size, for it has become inappropriate to have many children unlike in the past. In modern cultures where value on almost everything is placed on money, both parents have to work to support the family. If the household happens to be dominated by female children, the pressing need of sustaining the family characterized by females provokes a reassessment of the family structure, which was previously construed, though uncritically, as a male thing. Thus, females are supported and trained to assume roles that were traditionally reserved for males. The pursuit of formal education takes a similar turn, and the daring and logical instincts of females get developed to heights that are comparable, in many spheres, to that of males. These are the females who happen to be natural feminists in the sense that their familial background, developed in the masculine mould, brings to them the blessing of challenging the forces of inequality.

Much of the domination of man over woman is viewed by man as acceptable, having drawn, as has been noted, on the principle of might as the major or sole reason. Man differs from woman – man may say – because the mental, emotional, and moral fortitude of man, unlike woman, controls, manages, and above all, wins in a competitive world. Try to analyze the logical basis of this contention, and you will end up being unwise. Empirically, however, this contention falls in place insofar as woman has been, for the most part, historically barred from unearthing her daring dispositions in the field of competition and access to institutional resources. The idea that woman has values is wholeheartedly accepted by man. The point is that proud man sees the values of woman as situated - and ultimately connected - with her role as a mother, the nurturer of a child from the “breast” of womanhood. Never mind this debasing of woman. It generates an advantage that proud man is unable to fathom. Understand that motherly care of a baby is finer than that of the father. The mother, unlike the father, has the kind of succulence and tenderness that the baby desires most. Add unto this the comparable proficiency of woman – granted man and woman are equally eligible to tap opportunities and resources – then woman may come out, baffling as it may seem, better than man.

The good thing about the feminist movement is that it cumulates the courage to challenge the serious biases of man, and, thus, wins for its members and admirers a good deal of dignity that includes letting man to recognize that woman is fully ripe to engage man in the field of competition and that woman has the qualities, just like man, to access institutional resources without the usual tacit discrimination from man. In fact, a whole lot of modern women have found it expedient to be educated as qualitatively as man in order to bridge the chasm of inequality – or eliminate it. The gains from this endeavour have been considerable though the unwarranted institutional practice of paying woman less money than man for similar work done and for expressing similar abilities is still a canker.

Whether woman exploits her beauty to win over the attention and affection of man, whether she carries over her beauty to man with the hope of manipulating man for material gains, is beside the point. In life, one often uses one’s strengths to enhance life, and it matters not what the nature of such strengths are unless in applying the strengths, harm occurs or is liable to occur, especially to others. When man keeps saying that he is naturally superior to woman, he continues to go round in circles as if his power of reasoning has forsaken him. To be sure, there are many domains of studies that man claims to be better than woman. The natural sciences and technology are often cited to support this claim. It is true to say that the computational complexities of these two domains grant them pride of place in academia. What one should understand is that history has favoured man over woman in the quest for high levels of education. And familial arrangements have contributed much to this discriminatory practice.

In the family, the coexistence of the male and female child permits enhanced and suppressed talents to decide human fate. As expected, the male child is usually given the desirable family support aimed at helping him to fully explore his talents unlike the female child. This familial arrangement is deep-seated to the effect that nobody is ready to - or seems to - question its illegality. If there are subordinate, and in some instances, undervalued personalities in a household, which, historically, has been the trademark of woman, careful scrutiny of the potentialities of woman points out that there is no good reason to commit the sin of restraining her from being adventurous just like man. Familial and institutional arrangements, unsupported by empirical laws or policies, need to be reviewed. One witnesses all the time institutions that presume that woman’s role compared to man’s is, essentially, subservient. The consequence of this anomaly is the unnatural twisting of woman’s personality and potentialities.

Civilized societies – that is to say, societies that care to redeem life from the clutches of gender discrimination – experience, or are likely to experience, great achievements based, partly, on the equitable friendship, partnership and production between man and woman. Disregard or reject this point, and the forces of liberty, justice and equality are likely to be enraged.