On the 8th of March, the world celebrates the International Women’s Day almost in all countries. It is amazing how most of the parties and holidays we treasure always remind us that we have a bigger problem than we assume. When we celebrate the Independence Day, we are reminded of the slavery. When we celebrate the Labor day, we are reminded of the pain that workers go through. etc. and when we celebrate the Women’s day, we are reminded of the pain that women undergo.
History demonstrates that the international women’s day begun as a fight between men and women. It was women who decided they were going to fight the stereotype and the system that treated them not as equal beings to who men were. The preferential treatment was not merely domestic but it had become an official public policy. We all know that ancient cultures kept a woman below a man by all means of existence and exercise.
European ancient cultures were substantially very androcentric (focused on the male at the expense of the female) and patriarchal (male dominated) in their make-up and personally, I think this was the reason of all the abuse that women suffered in those ages. Women suffered due to the perception that men had about them. Cultures defined men and women differently, and both men and women lived according to these cultural definitions. Now in this presentation am not going to repeat what you have probably heard or even read about. All am going to do, is to briefly discuss who a woman is and who the real enemy of women is.
Who is a woman? A woman is a human being. Created in the image of God. A woman was not taken from the rib of a man, as the second Hebrew creation account puts it in Genesis 2:21-23. Whoever uses this scripture to explain the origin of a woman is abusive to all women around the world. A woman, just like a man, was created by God by the same means, and in the same time just as a man was. The proof for this is found in Genesis 1:26-31:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground–everything that has the breath of life in it–I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning–the sixth day.
Now what you see in the Bible in Genesis 2 that indicates that man came from the rib does contradict with what I have just read in chapter one of the same book. Chapter two addresses the intimate relationship of a man and a woman and how it should be if it is to operate normally. Given our natural differences in thought, perception, and action, a female must control a male through submission and the male has to appreciate its esteem through that. When you read the bible, the concept of male to female relationship functionality will be emphasized again and again and it begins here in Genesis 2. So genesis 2 is not about the origin of a woman, but how the relationship between man and woman should be.
When God said let me create man, the Hebrew word “ADAMAH” does not mean a specific sex or gender but the translation is human beings. So, in the beginning, God created human beings both male and female. In fact, the word Male means human being and the word Fe-male is a human being with a fetus. So it is with the words ‘man’ which adamah or human being and the word Wo-man which means a human being with a womb.
So the difference between men and women is not in their humanness but rather in the bodily features of each. Women and men differ in two stages primary and secondary. The primary difference and standard, therefore, is the difference in genitalia and reproductive organs. The secondary difference is in their physiology (breasts, voice, hair distribution, weight, height, strength, and longevity). So to me, the problems of women that actually advance holidays like international Women’s day are not of Nature but of Nurture. What do I mean?
The way women are treated in our world today is not so much on what they are naturally but rather what kind of individual women are. Nature is how you were created and Nurture is how you were groomed. Behavioral and attitudinal differences between men and women emerge from culture rather than biology. So when I listen to concepts like Women Emancipation I always wonder in what culture specifically does this concept apply? Because the problem with women today is a loss of a culture.
The western world accuses the Eastern world of oppressing women but the Eastern world also blames the immorality of women on the western world. Marriages are surviving in the Eastern world while families are shattered in the West. The west has nurtured and groomed a woman known as Miss independent. She is educated, a single mother, a career woman and she lives alone in the apartment. While the woman in the Arabic peninsula suffers the extreme of male dominance, the woman in the West is a victim of her very liberty.
Did you know that by average there is minimal and little domestic violence in the Arabic states as compared to the violence and abuse in the families in the European communities? Cultural constructs have groomed women to define what they want within the confines of what they don’t want. So in a sense; what they don’t want and what they want are not independent but dependent on each other. A modern woman says: ‘I want a man who will not tell me what to do’ and my question would be, would he really be a man then?
The women we celebrate today as achievers and those women in high offices are not married (for whatever reasons) and if they are married, they are poor housewives and poor mothers. I am not defining success and limiting it to marriage but at least we all still agree that family is a common and a universal good. I am not just hard on women, but all am saying is that the operation distinction between a man and a woman is that man causes chaos and a woman sorts it out. Men mess-up and the women put-it-back-together.
The only tangible success of Jenniffer Musisi as the female executive director of Kampala City Council Authority in Uganda in the years 2015-2017 is that she did a very simple thing that all men in the past had failed: she swept the city clean. A woman is a symbol of order and organization. I was raised by a woman, I personally believe the word parent means a mother more than it elucidates a father.
Our past and present were determined by a choice of a certain woman known as Eve. When Eve ate from the forbidden fruit, the man, being weak as we are had no option but to follow, and here we are. I think ladies and gentlemen, the problem of adultery can only be solved by women getting off streets as prostitutes. It can be solved by single women denying sex and rebuking intimate relationships with married men.
Women must understand that we men are just disciples who will literary do what you tell us to do. You don’t know how many presidents, how many kings, CEOs, army commanders, managers, pastors and leaders are controlled by women. This world attributes its success and its failures to women. Unfortunately women are alone and independent in apartments doing nothing but eating from the forbidden fruit.
Ladies and gentlemen we Christians celebrate a God who stooped too low and was conceived by a virgin woman by the names of Mary. Surprisingly she was a virgin, and am sure if God wanted to come back through the same means, he would struggle to get a virgin in our world. While millions of women are aborting babies today, Mary did not abort our savior. She took care of Jesus with the little resources around. Am very sure many kids would have been on streets if it were not for some Marys. Single mothers deserted by men, left to struggle with kids. If it were not for these women, many people we celebrate today wouldn’t have been here.
Every woman must understand that there is nothing like Gender Roles but rather Moral roles. You should do and deserve each and every work as long as it is moral and paying. Cultural-Anthropology and Politics might exercise what we call gender stratification (unequal distribution of rewards like resources, power, prestige, human rights and personal freedom) on you, but you must understand that whenever God has something important to do in the world, he hires a woman.
So, woman, stop seeing emancipation from men, men are not your problem. Your problem is Sin, your problem is poverty, your problem is not esteem or belief in yourself but rather wrong beliefs about yourself. Because of the wrong beliefs about yourself and others, you have become a fashion nuisance. A poor mother, a wrong wife. A greedy leader. You have become a cosmetology test-tube, you have become a wife to a mentally sick man.
Women do not have a natural problem, they just suffer a nurture problem. They are victims of fashion industries, they have been indoctrinated to think that dress is only smart if it exhibits their nakedness. Women are victims of the entertainment industries, it is women who dance naked in video songs and it is women undressed and used in movies. If women stopped going to discotheques and bars, I know of many men who wouldn’t go back.
If women were not in the brothels and hotels, men would not be spending their lunch breaks in them and they would be going home early. We would not have a problem with polygamy if women were not comfortable with being second, third, fourth etc. wives to these weak men. If women turn to God and loose themselves from all these social conditionings, this world will be saved. The action might be in men, but the power is in women. So, Woman, loose yourself and help the world in Jesus name.
God bless you. I invoke Truth, Wisdom and Faith
Am Pr. I.T.WHITE
The Gospel Hawker.
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 