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The struggle has not liberated women from environmental shackles
2007-03-08 09:19:56
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
A LOOK at the development of women ever since campaigns for women liberation started in the 1970s shows that there have been substantial developments as far as the weaker sex is concerned, but women have not been liberated from environmental shackles.
Not only that women now hold big posts in world organizations, governments and local institutions, but they manage or own big companies that one may not have thought of them being in the hands of this gender in the past.
Women more than men drive the best cars on earth and they work in posh offices, while their spending is by far higher than those of men.
Women development processes against degradation; oppression and abuse have taken many dimensions, but specifically three.
One, women have been great campaigners and fighters along government circles, whereby they have been able to change a number of things including various legislations, by laws, cultural rites and even religious beliefs.
In the case of Tanzania and Rwanda and even in Uganda there have been deliberate efforts by the government to ensure that women like many other underprivileged groups in society are allocated quotas in as far as executive, parliamentary and judicial positions are concerned.
The entire process however did not start straight as many people might think.
Initially it was a campaign process of people who, one would say had no seriousness in the transformation of matters pertaining to women and the society.
Most of them, for example, for those who started at the University of Dar es Salaam were women who did not make it with their husbands, or at least had some bad experiences with men before.
But as the campaigns gathered momentum, they managed to penetrate even among the women in the towns, villages and even hamlets.
The biggest achievement, which made even the government to come in their support is the United Nations, which basing the struggle on the principles of equality between men and women decided to give certain benchmarks for women development besides allotting an agenda for the gentle sex.
One of them is women and education and that all children irrespective of races should have equal access to education just like men and that they should get employment and enjoy all the privileges that men do enjoy.
Besides they should not be subjected to oppression, degradation, harassment, rape or sexual abuse.
Also recognized is their right to enfranchisement, which up to now is not recognized by some polities in certain countries.
Women in Tanzania now hold close to 30 per cent of the high posts in Parliament as required by both the United Nations and SADC.
However this figure is not even closer to that of Rwanda, which is leading in the world in terms of the number of women who hold public posts.
Women in this central African country constitute over 40 per cent of the seats in Parliament and in other government organs.
The Speaker of the Parliament, just like that of neighbouring Burundi is also a woman.
All these show, albeit in a graphical sense, the level and extent of achievements made by women in their noble course of women liberation.
But while the society is boasting all these achievements by women, they pose a number of questions to us, many of which may be going without answers.
One such question is the kind of society that women have been building in relation to the kind of struggles that they have been lodging.
Like many other previous forms of transformation, our women have pegged their struggles on mainly the elimination of what they call antediluvian rites and beliefs `perpetrated by men` and which in one way or the other impinge upon women rights.
As such they have always been talking of getting rid of this, getting rid of that, but their campaigns and struggles have always lacked two main things.
One is the kind of society that they envisage thereafter after all what they do not want has been done away with; and two is what should be the means to achieve what they want to be put in place.
For example, in their campaigns against female genital mutilation, one prominent feminine organization was asked by a Maasai woman: `When you are telling us to do away with circumcision of women and the related cultural rituals could you as well tell us what other programme we should put in place to enable us distinguish a young woman from an old one.
To that particular organization just as to many other institutions there has been no answer to the question.
The examples of the failure to provide societal direction are abundant, but suffice it to say that still the human society demands a lot more from women liberation activists than the campaigns and the struggles can offer.
Every evolution or revolution in the human race is usually associated with a corresponding development in the productive forces and hence a liberation of human beings.
Since the British Baroness campaigns in parliament at the beginning of the 20C to date, the banner of women liberation has resulted in littly in the emancipation of the human race technologically.
Consider, for example, the unleashing of slaves from the shackles of the slave masters, while the liberation of the vassals resulted in the freeing of the vassals from the feudal lords to workers.
What should be noted is that every stage in the liberation of the human race was always associated with a great leap in the transformation of the productive forces-hence this created sort of relief to the subjects.
What has become an anomaly with the liberation of women and children is that these struggles are not associated with a corresponding development of the productive forces.
As a result women have tended to be left using the old productive forces.
A typical case here is in environment-the theme of this year\'s Women Day-women still remain the destroyers of the environment despite the massive campaigns, conferences and symposia about women liberation.
My mother down in my home village still depends on firewood cut from the now almost cleared forest near the village.
She still uses the old chair we were using, no land preservation methods she undertakes though she still cultivates crops.
All the flowing rivers from which we used to take baths during the day when we were young have dried up, Instead my mother is forced to fetch water far away from the village despite her old age.
Women liberation would have meant a modern home with all social facilities including tap water, power and domestic appliances to prevent the cutting down of trees, growing of more trees and preservation of rivers.
It would have meant the prevalence of a hospital nearby her home and improved infrastructure for transport and or the marketing of her flowers which she started growing five years ago.
The reason why women could not attain what they had planned to achieve is all clear-that the liberation movement was hijacked and placed in some hands that could only implement what they felt was not going to be detrimental to their interests.
As a result, it all lacked focus-the pioneers of the movement now live in luxurious houses, drive posh cars and fly from one point of the world to another as the majority of women are suffering.
The society and not necessarily women only, ought to relook into the struggle again and give it a new paradigm.
Otherwise the majority of the poor women folk shall continue to be exploited while some few clever women in league with men live a luxurious life and continue to propagate that they are fighting for women liberation.
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