This year’s international women day came with the theme #BreaktheBias, the attention it generated was quite enormous on a global level compared to what it has been in previous years. Probably because the world is continually being globalized and therefore people are more informed or because of the compelling force of the theme and the emotional reactions the word ‘bias’ brings with it.
Yes, both men and women all over the world were moved by this powerful theme and spoke for the breaking of the bias against women.
Yet, for pragmatic purposes we must ask certain questions regarding the acclaimed bias against women.
- Is there truly a bias against women?
- Is it manmade or natural. In other words, what is the interface between the female and male dichotomy and how has it contributed to the bias
- What or who are the enablers of this bias
- How can this bias be broken or eliminated
Is There A Bias
So in other to answer these questions we look beyond the cries of bias to the facts on ground. For example in assessing if there is truly a bias against women we have to scan through society, from the family to the bigger community, to the workplace, schools/academics, sports, religious settings and should we say ‘ultimately’ politics.
The Facts Say Yes – In the family, especially in African cultures, women are treated as second-class humans. We have cases of women who are thrown out of the home because they have no male child even though they might have female children. Those who practice such acts opine that females have no inheritance and cannot continue the family line as they will be married out.
There is also the monster of sexual abuse against women. This happens in different forms like being objectified in the workplace with disturbing comments and glances, human trafficking and the chief being rape.
Is it manmade or natural
No doubt, the male and female gender are not completely alike, neither are they totally different. Apart from being intelligent and reasoning beings, we can see differences even in the anatomy of a man and a woman.
The issue here is that when the natural and manmade factors meet, the ball lies in the court of the manmade factors to ensure that there is no bias. It calls for delicate management and leadership, but it is important to point out that balancing the dichotomy equitably is possible. We cannot
For example, though men are built stronger than the ladies, a seeming fair entrance has been afforded all genders in entrance into the military, not forgetting a tough sport like rugby too. But in the workplace, how have this dichotomy being balance in departments and even promotions.
Because IQ is not gender specific, it means that same indices will be used to track the performance or productivity of workers irrespective of gender. Then when it comes to hard jobs like in some aspects of engineering, undue advantage will not be given to the women just for the sake of not building a bias. Those who can do the work better should be allowed to do it, if it is mainly men then let it be, because at the long run a poorly done construction will affect all and sundry. Except in the case where machines are taking over human labor then it can be left to anyone irrespective of gender to handle such aspects, even robots.
Enablers of the bias
To answer this we will still look at the natural and manmade factors. Are women complaining of bias just for the sake of being women; for being the ones who bear children, for not being as physically strong as men, for having ling hairs, etc.? Not really.
The issue here is that men and women alike have not handled the women-in-society relationship well. For example we should consider if maternity treatment or provisions are fair enough to women across the globe as they gladly conceive and give birth to children, whether they are in the working class or housewives.
Highly efficient measure should be in place to ensure that men do not oppress women with their higher physical power like in the cases of rape and when such happens justice is sure and swift for the women.
How to break the bias
From what we have said above, it is clear that breaking the bias against women is the responsibility of humans and not nature or machine.
And you know what, it needs no long speech – just do the right thing.
There needs to be gender equality so that women are not treated like second class humans.
Women have to be vigorously empowered, albeit in a strategic manner, to augment the great disparity between them and the men.
Tackle the institutional or formal aspect of the bias, for example, laws that hurtfully discriminate against women should be reviewed in organizational and state structures.
Tackle the bias on an individual or group basis. People, men and women alike will have to engage in self-introspection to access how they might have been contributing to the bias against women.
Why The Bias May Not Be Broken
The term #breakthebias is actually a broad vague term and rightly so. Herein lies a difficulty to solving the issue itself, yet it also shows the seriousness of the matter. It is easier in an open war to say #stopthewar, though there are other things associated with the war beyond the battlefield, yet in this case stopping a war that is multifaceted is more practical than breaking a bias that is also multifaceted.
In the case of a war, a ceasefire could be agreed upon whether before or after negotiating the factors which led to the war in the first place, but in the bias against women it goes beyond agreeing in principle to break the bias, the bias must be broken in practice. Even if there is a global conference on breaking the bias against women and no steps are taken to break the bias then it is cheer merry-go-round.
Because it is a multifaceted issue, global and yet culture specific, we will come to the biases in a great ship and also with single baits, i.e. just as the term #breakthebias and others like it (*in the past and hopefully not in the future) create the awareness of the known or unknown injustice against women, there will also be targeted actions on specific biases, because in this context the bias is just a general term that may exist for some and not exist for the others. In doing this we will then not only have a name-calling but also problems solved.
The men and COMMONSENSE
Breaking the bias against women meets an ageless obstacle in the fact that a great percentage of the work of breaking the bias lies with the men in a society dominated by men.
It has been said that commonsense is not common, maybe this is the reason why we have relied on men for so long without meaningful results in ending the discrimination and abuse which women have faced time immemorial.
What does commonsense have to do with this? For example, commonsense should hinder a man from raping a woman because it hurts, dehumanizes, is traumatic and has other vices which come with the act of rape, but in a situation where character failure trumps commonsense and a woman is raped, commonsense further requires that justice is serve quickly to the offender(s) as a deterrent to others who might be tempted to carry out such act in the future. But in most cases as is often witnessed, cases of rape bring unending litigation in the court of law, the victims remain scarred for life while the offenders go scot free.
Breaking the bias against women at any level, whether in the workplace, home, community, politics, religion, education and others is requires a simple act of – just doing the right thing, especially because a woman is not less human than a man.
The Victim Is A Culprit ?
The call to break the bias against women would have been easier and effective if it had a 99.9% support from the women themselves. This is in view of the fact that women are faced with real or imagined complexities in their relationship among themselves.
Chief among these complexities and for the purpose of this piece is the unhealthy rivalry which is rife among the female gender; the women themselves, young or old are not in dispute of this reality. They pull each other down when they feel their position is threathened by another.
But observing a female baby and the male counterpart with the similarities in their tendencies shows that the unhealthy rivalry among the women may be the result of an agelong subtle conditioning of the womans thought pattern and life as they grow up.
Society has made the woman believe that there’s not much it can offer them after the men have taken ‘natural’ positions except maybe as midwives – trained or spontaneous. So the women fight for everything among themselves; to be the chosen girlfriend or wife, to be the selected model for the runway.
The women subconsciously think that if any among them becomes the last woman standing then she will automatically be the only woman taken into platforms reserved for men
Another example to buttress this point further is the case of Female Genital Mutilation.
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