The relationship between a horse and the rider is difficult to explain. The horse is stronger, bigger, faster, fiercer and more powerful than the rider, who could even be small. Yet, the horse loyally allows the rider mount and direct it to battle, sports or others. Anyone climbing a horse risks being kicked away or killed by the horse, except he gains the horse’s trust through understanding and confidence. The relationship between leaders and followers or man and woman may be similar to that of horse and rider. Without obtaining women’s trust through understanding and competence, tendencies of feminism may continue to revolt and disorganize the society.
Feminism is the belief that women should have the same rights as men.[1] This struggle rose from some women’s feelings of denials of rights in ‘male-built’ societies. Feminists blame patriarchy, not reason, for gender-based restrictions, pay-gap, political failure, ‘unequal’ education, inheritance, bride-price and adopting grooms’ surname. However, some women, especially happily married women and ladies with good fatherly experience, distance themselves from feminism.
Human beings organize their societies by agreeing to collaborate in utilizing their human and natural resources to satisfy their needs. These needs include food, shelter, clothing, security, affection, belief, companionship, intimacy, reproduction, comfort, social order, leadership and identity. To achieve this, humans distribute social roles according to people’s talents and natural dispositions. Because of their physical and emotional strength, men often undertake more physically and coordinative roles like leadership, security and productivity. Due to their motherly nature of care, patience and nurturement, women undertake management roles for fair distribution and sustainable growth. Each person earns sufficient resources for his/her immediate or potential roles in the society.
For the leadership, protection and production roles, boys are trained to be physically, emotionally and morally strong, disciplined and inventive. Advanced societies train men to have clear understanding of the social order, strong-will and persistence to excel and contribute their productivity to the society. They train young men to be disciplined, caring, understanding and responsible for themselves, their siblings, parents, relatives and society. Young men who have been trained like this become successful and attractive to ladies who they later marry. The ladies are proud to be under caring and capable men who make good decisions and provide good leadership. Those were the type of men that Africa and some other parts of the world had produced in the past.
Unfortunately, during colonialism, Europeans imposed an unproductive-shadow capitalism on Africa by seizing the means of production as land and natural resources. Then, the only way to obtain survival funds was marketing colonialists’ goods and extracting natural resources for colonialists’ industries. At independence, colonialists handed over the same political structure to the indigenes they trained to defend European interests. Those who got the colonialist political structure seize and sell peoples’ lands[2] and mineral resources[3][4][5] to former colonialists.[6] Today, Nigerian men lack access to the mineral resources for productivity and sustenance. Instead, they are expected struggle for chance to provide administrative, marketing and soft-skill labour to get government-issued money.
With this social disordering, ethnic groups become unable to train young men for social responsibility, leadership and productivity. Instead, they urge young men to seek opportunities for supplying crude resources to former colonialists, or importing and distributing colonialists’ consumer goods. The role of overseeing crude-resource exportation and finished-good importation is too insufficient to engage Nigerian men. This situation of unproductivity robs Nigerian men’s self-esteem as they struggle to obtain survival positions in marketing or administration. Despite the lack of masculine education and opportunity for productivity, men still expect the feminine admiration accorded to responsible and productive men.
In the absence of those masculine outputs in productivity, females doubt many men’s qualification for respect. The men who lose out in the money economy that denies men of productive opportunities become first casualties. Females begin to doubt if the new breed of men are capable of making good leadership decisions for their family. Also, the women enter the money economy struggle of marketing and distributing goods and services to the few privileged ones. Eventually, they demand freedom to do whatever they wanted since they are equal to men.
Ultimately, humans are all responsible for one another in the society, for nobody is an island. Though absolute freedom sounds wonderful, the destructiveness of human desires makes unchecked freedom dangerous to the individual and society. There may not be a final argument to convince women with deep emotional betrayal in their expectations from men. Men are supposed to be responsible and caring protectors, advisers, providers, partners and fathers. But when the social structure restricts such men, feminism revolts by seeking extreme freedom from the men, and seek unjustified privileges and excuses for leaving their social responsibility.
Instead of masking their disappointments in different shades of feminism, feminists could advocate for social reformation toward better training on masculine responsibility. This call involves reordering societies, mainly in Africa, for productivity and masculinity. If men truly become responsible, and discharging their productive and protective duties, the number of feminists will reduce.
[1] Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, International student’s edition. S.V. Feminism
[2] 29th March 1978, Land use act. P7
[3] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 2
[4] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 2, paragraph 1
[5] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 3
[6] Neo-colonialism – Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, 2009 edition (Abuja: Panaf publishers, 2009)