By Chinyere Elizabeth Okoroafor (Reviewer)
AS the book cover states, People Just Like You…Hope for The Girl Child, is a pragmatically written book that tackles ideas of gender bias while providing hope for the girl child.
The eight chapter’s book draws from the trajectory lives of few phenomenal women from different parts of the world to demystify the argument surrounding gender prejudice. These women, refused to remain in the closet and as the writer puts it, they are ‘people just like you’.
The writer, a human capital analyst and pastor began by saying that it is disheartening that women have been lied to for generations to believe the axiom that says ‘It is a man’s world.’
He affirms that it is also a woman’s world and goes on to show how applying the tenets of feminism to our society would radically improve the lives of people from all demographics.
The first chapter expresses the essence of resilience of purpose and why it is good for women to aspire to be somebody. It draws its points using Golda Meir story. At the age of 14, her mother wanted her to get married but she refused, rather opting to get education. Meir would later become the first woman to become Prime Minister in Israel in 1969 after she has served as Minister of Labour and as a policy maker. She did all that while married and with children. She didn’t conform to the view that a woman’s place is only in the kitchen.
Read Also: Expert urges FG to prioritise girl child empowerment
The writer’s point is simple at the end of chapter one, prejudice thrives where dreams are absent. Just like Meir, women must not feel limited because they think it is a man’s world only. They must aspire to be somebody, embrace education which will contribute in building society as they build their homes.
He also points out that a woman can be two things, a nation builder as well as a home making, adding that issues bordering gender prejudice would be irrelevant if the girl child is exposed and allowed to pursue her dreams and passion.
Drawing from the layers of the famous Aba women’s riot of 1929, the second chapter notes that no man will easily subjugate a woman unless the woman keeps quiet; something which the author boldly suggests has had a part in sustaining the very social imbalances that lie behind gender inequality. A woman from the Oloko, a village in today’s Abia state had challenged the mandatory local revenue ordinance which meant that both women and all domestic animals within their households would be taxed. The woman named Nwanyereuwa, refused to allow Captain J. Cook, an Assistant District Officer count her household. This act lead to the resignation of no less that sixteen warrant chiefs and the annulling of the project of tax women and livestock.
In his consideration of the Aba women’s riot, the writer notes that complacence is an advantage of the oppressor against the oppressed, maintaining that when a woman’s voice is loud in purpose, history will be altered.
Both chapter 2 and 3 uses the life of two women from different background to records that no social pattern that prejudices any group of people is immutable.
Chapter three is challenging to read, as it bares detailed story of Rosa Parks, who challenged the racial segregation laws that guided the operation of buses in Montgomery, Alabama, United States of America. During this period, Black Americans were subjected to sit at the back seats while the White Americans maintained the front spaces. But Parks, a woman after a few years, altered history by refusing to keep silent in a reign of anomaly.
Chapter four begins with the clear reflection that been a female is not a limitation to what you can be or achieve. For the writer, sex is a mere biological description. Sense of purpose is a drive that can possess anyone, man and woman alike and those who base their acceptance on the gender role because of long held tradition have completely failed to understand what it means to have a purpose.
To prove this point he gives, the story of the youngest Member of Parliament in Uganda, and on the African continent, Proscovia Alengot Oromait shows how success is gender blind. She became MP in Uganda at 19 in a country were men dominated the political landscape.
In chapter five and six, the writer mentioned the youngest person in the world to be featured in Forbes Magazine at age 10 in 2013, Zuriel Oduwole and the 2014 co-recipient of Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai to also expand the scope of sense of purpose as a girl child without feeling limited.
The last two chapters drawing from the exemplary lives of Grace Alele-Wiliams and Aralolu Olamuyiwa, offers ideas on how the girl child can be anything from anywhere in the world. The main suggestion is that only through engaging with all forms of social inequality can the girl child hope to redress gender imbalances.
People Just Like You…Hope for The Girl Child is a book for relaxed or sporadic reading. Its accounts are easy to follow or summarise, because of its simple use of words, straight to the point approach without requiring considerable patience and concentration.
The chapters are always insightful and exciting, pointing that despite the reality of gender bias against the girl child, gender inequality can disappear if women began to see themselves as an individual who can achieve anything through resilience. And that indeed, whatever a woman accept (p.69) is what she has agreed to be her reality.
