HOW EMPOWERED ARE WOMEN?

Women empowerment is a wholesale commodity highly in demand in all cultures today. It is also an active hub that attracts many activists, who are warmly embraced by societies. Questions on how better their discourse and subjects have been in their respective cultures are extinct. But the realities keep coming, they unfold in sequence, women keep baffling with their roles, prospects, dignity, and existence in politics, economics, social and cultural lives. It is because many women are not empowered, at least in its true sense.

They are suffering in the age of women empowerment.

Get a good education, have your own career ,and depend on yourself are the common rhetoric. And its manifestation and mechanisms cannot be overemphasized; almost every woman has this in mind, and live by its values and morals. And that is substantive because more women have pristine credentials, some have ascended into high offices, in corporations, and in governments. Others have changed the small world they belonged to, using character and education to liberate younger generations. But we are still not asking questions about broken homes, suicides, depression, broken communities, increase in prostitution (hookups), and other vices and problems associated with women. These are not only concurrent; they also increase bountifully in cultures and dispensations. And is as if these traumas and ruins aren’t real.

We are feeling reluctant to question the ills of these empowerment credos and their logic for fear of yet another feminist shakedown.

Whatever be the case, here we stand with our women. Their sweeping qualms with societies, their struggle with human rights and constitutions, their vulnerabilities to political ambitions, and the sensations of the demonization of men that gives them pseudo-superiority. Women baffle by these juggernauts, they get deceived by abstract imperatives and are constantly left to suffer the looming consequence.

How substantive has the power that they were promised become? How are they using these powers to tackle all these crises and cultural upheavals, crashing even their existence? We can still remain egoistic, and narrow-headed on these issues, because democracy and human rights will, in the end, give abortion rights, lesbian rights, and all the rights women need. But the bipolar disorders will continue to expose them, divorce and marriage issues would continue to hunt them, children will continue to turn their emotions into robots in daycare schools, and societies will continue to tear apart with no one bearing no responsibility for its repair. We will still have several waves of feminism.

Why is the average empowered woman find it difficult to keep a man as his husband? Why is the average man, having contempt on women they see to be empowered? Running away from them because they are simply well educated?

Was it a wrong projection of women education or women empowerment was overlinked to education?

Some women go on declaring that what men ca do, women can do better. And some hold it relentlessly that submissiveness to husband and children at home is a bulldog mission, directly referencing and citing gender equality tenets. Others have sort to demonize men in the society, condescending on their roles and authority. These quagmires have been worthwhile, but the explosions and ruins of it have been a milestone of misery, to be reflected in its true identity, if indeed, it still matters.

In an age where women want to share breastfeeding duty with men, where women want to become men in marriage in the form of lesbianism. In an age where women want to compromise their natural endowments for the sake of gender equality and woman empowerment. In an age where women choose happy jobs over happy homes, where women choose their careers over children. Such an age simply cannot fare women well.

But it must be emphasized that not all pioneers of women empowerments are dump. Some do proper breastfeeding, ensure proper care in their homes, take good care of their husbands, and ensure that there is absolute order and peace in their homes. Younger ladies see those women with beautiful children, and handsome and responsible husbands aside from their well-established careers. How best have they been able to inculcate such values in their women empowerment spree?

This awkward argument may seem stupid, but not untrue. It seems unnecessary but that’s how it is.

Since motherhood became a sharable responsibility, and women became dependent on their own course, societies are still searching for solitude for children and the next generations.  They are torn between nostalgia and progressivism, in a conundrum where women still find it difficult to reclaim their destiny.

In Africa, where gender equality was late in its arrival, men and women are still struggling to configure their doctrines with their cultures. The educated ones who understand their cultural upbringing have saved themselves with balance. They live happily without explosions. These women, though well educated, sometimes with an intimidating resume, blends the roles she has at home and the that of her career, in order to find organized and peaceful participation. Husbands of such women give their best to keep this balance. In the end, there is peace and harmony for both the marriage and the children.

The uneducated ones who can’t make sense of gender equality live in their conservatism. Women don’t argue with roles, for they know it is a must for them. Men don’t demand such duties from authorities since they have been taken care of by default. Couples from such perspectives don’t argue about gender equality at all.

But here comes the educated ones whose ego and pride dare them to neither balance nor comply. On principle, they will redefine roles for their husbands, and for themselves. Spending the rest of their lives arguing or fighting about whose is to cook, clean and bath the children. Because they are empowered, therefore have the right to decide on what to do and what not to do in the scope of their careers. Such qualms, in the end, turn to be burdened, with senseless divorce filings and broken marriages. Problems, which transcend to the communities in which they live.

If empowerment, is anything good and can bring some women to the peaceful negotiation table in society, why has it exploded in an unprecedented manner in such a way that many women turn to burden themselves with it?

In the Western world, where individualism, gender equality, feminism, and human rights rule the day; they seem to be running out of time. Because things get worse and worse every day.

In the United States, the White population keeps reducing, divorce rate keeps increasing and women suffer more from bipolar disorders than ever before. And that is no news. The average woman cannot simply keep a home. Their supposed existential feelings for men keep reducing, sometimes, with sweeping acts of DIY (Do It Yourself). While being at the mercy of anti-depressants and chlorine tablets, their careers are being jeopardized by constant competitions and struggles which many times, send them to psychotherapists.

The Ghanaian woman, who still holds that degrees and certificates still empower women might seem stupid in the eyes of the American woman whose Ph.D. couldn’t save her from painful premature divorce. And the uneducated American might also think that the well-educated Nigerian must be having a comparatively good life. To the educated Nigerian, it may seem funny, if not annoying.

Hence, comparing histories, cultures, and dispensations, one finds out that the credos of women empowerment aren’t the answers to women’s problems at all. Surprisingly, these have been the benchmarks for women’s emancipation for decades.

Roles in societies shouldn’t be burdened by mere ideologies. Natural endowments become extinct when subjected to strict legal concepts which normally fall into political sway. Cultures that aren’t embroiled with gender equality aren’t primitive, they might just need a few changes to put their conservatism in balance, which will bring peace and harmony to their societies. And that is the problem of the global society, is as if those who aren’t fond of western concepts are primitive with no values and human rights. The westerners aren’t all that fine either. If you are ready to emancipate your woman, find a better suitable alternative. In the meantime, many women, both educated and uneducated, are simply not empowered.