Life of a Girl Child in Africa
From childhood, parents indoctrinate their kids, they project ideas on to their young minds, some false,some wrong. It's not done of malicious intent...it's just a continuing circle of tradition and in the case of gender roles,it is no different. Kids are taught to assimilate; swallow the whole capsule of culture and ideologies.
At the announcement of a child's birth the joy is more if it's a "son" and if it's not "the next would be a son". We are eager to know what the gender of the baby is, these days we even have gender reveal parties to that effect, that's not a problem in itself.
As the children grow; boy and girl in a home, duties and roles are taught and this is the beginning of some of the problems plaguing our societies. The boy must be a man, he's not to be emotional even in pain. The girl is to learn to be "quiet" as her outspokenness can easily be taken for brazenness, she should follow her mother to market, be in the kitchen, clean the house and do laundry,not bad while her brother is to be assertive, in charge of things, engaging in more physical "heavy duty" chores occasionally. His dirty clothes "magically" become clean again, his food "appears" when due, he's to be fed to the point of tiredness as "a man needs food to build", security affairs of the home are his concern, he sorts out bills, when "NEPA" comes around he's the one they want to see.
Mama is overprotective of her son however she tries to hide it he's her favorite, we understand too. "Sons are special"... While the son is encouraged to build a formidable network of friends via social interactions such as sports group, Student Union etc, the daughter is cautioned to shy away from those if she wants to be a well respected woman.
He can go play football, you sit in and break egusi seeds. He can volunteer for Red Cross but don't you know you have to help your mom in the kitchen, even that choir practice you cannot go today cos there's a heap of laundry for you to do after that you make supper.
The daughter is bright academically, that's ok... The son, averagely good that's great you can study engineering with this result, your sister should do NCE or something, teachers have more time to cater for their homes or... Nursing, not bad,not bad at all. Errors made; "he's a man" that's the way they are, for the daughter: "don't you know you're a woman..."
Over time the boy has a network of solid relationships built from various interactions,the girl on the other hand has occasional opportunities to meet other girls and they become "friends" based on nothing tangible in most cases just to "gist". The boy's network can evolve to be a powerful society, even political but the girls are competing with one another for attention from men. Men that look lustfully at them,their value becomes about their body because that's how the society sees them.
While the boy is doing more mental exertions at this time, the girl is spending more time in front of the mirror day dreaming about her rich husband.
The handful of successful ladies we have we still want to burden with gender problems, once we are introduced to an accomplished woman next thing we want to know is whether she's happily married with kids and if she's not "she must must find it real hard to be submissive"
"All these educated women have problems"
And we wonder why we have more trending and emerging "slay Queens"?
Never forget demand and supply.
Credits: https://web.facebook.com/Mz.Purpleroyal/posts/1505249369518504