Former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi once lamented that emphasis in education should shift from the much touted “girl child” to the “boy child.” His lamentation stem from the research fact that more boys from his state are shunning education and are moving in droves to start their own businesses or act as apprentices. His prediction is that in the next couple of years the ratio maybe 70 to 30 in favour of girls.
Whenever I go for a function in any of our tertiary institutions I make it a point of duty to observe this growing trend. From my observation, the numbers of students tilt significantly in favour of the “weaker sex” even though I may not have the statistics to back this up for now. I had thought this phenomenon applies only to Nigeria, but on Monday, I got a tweet from Ashesi University College Accra, Ghana with a link to a story titled: “Ashesi students elect new government leadership.”
The story said for the first time in Ashesi’s history, an all-female team has been elected to head the university’s student government; the institution is 60 percent female. Even in our tertiary institutions’ women are gradually making inroads into the academia and student unionism.
There is no doubt that the world is changing as more women are coming out of their shell and making the best of their lives. I have seen many become self-sufficient in every respect before they clock 30; some even run businesses in their 20s. Many present day women –it appears – are far wiser and smarter than their male counterpart of same age.
As I continue to give this issue serious thought, I stumbled on a related story from the United States of America (USA) which said women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history earlier this year. “Most managers,” the story said “are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?” The story inquired.
This is a very potent question. I sat with some “matured single ladies” some weeks back and the singular most important issues on their mind were finding the right man to marry. These were well educated successful women who have the best life can offer except, perhaps, a husband. One of them lamented that all the best she had encountered from her area are all traders with so much money “but little up there” (meaning education and IQ).
Connect this with an article written by Funke Egbemode, the Managing Editor of the Sun newspaper written in March this year. She wrote: “Today, I am worried about our sons, today’s young men. I am truly worried and every mother should pause, take a closer look at her sons and daughters and answer this question: are you empowering your son for the journey ahead of him? Answer truthfully, after all you are alone and you don’t have to let anybody hear you. I think Nigerian mothers have not done well raising future husbands and fathers. Let’s admit it; we have not scored above average that is if we achieved average at all.
“Take a closer look at your beautiful daughter and your handsome six-footer son. Who is better prepared for the task ahead? I know some of us had realised this and have done better than others but most Nigerian mothers need to buckle up. Our sons are not what they should be and we cannot have the society, the country we desire when we put unprepared men and overgrown boys in positions of authority.”
This is quite instructive coming from one mother to other mothers and if we are sincere, we’ll agree with her summation especially from the standpoint of the traditional role of a man being the head of his household.
However, the world has changed from the 1970s when a US based biologist, Ronald Ericsson, came up with a way to separate sperm carrying the male-producing Y chromosome from those carrying the X. His research heightened the preference for the male child.
But guess what happened in the 1990s: the ratio shifted 2 to 1 in favour of the female child! Ericsson could not believe this when a reporter presented the fact to him. In fact, a newer method for sperm selection, called “MicroSort,” is currently completing Food and Drug Administration clinical trials. The girl requests for that method run at about 75 percent! The girl child is now the queen in the US.
For nearly as long as civilization has existed, patriarchy – enforced through the rights of the firstborn son – has been the organising principle, with few exceptions. Men in ancient Greece tied off their left testicle in an effort to produce male heirs; women have killed themselves (or been killed) for failing to bear sons. In her iconic 1949 book, “The Second Sex,” the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir suggested that women so detested their own “feminine condition” that they regarded their newborn daughters with irritation and disgust.
But as things stand now, the global economy is evolving in a way that is eroding the historical preference for male children. Over several centuries, South Korea, for instance, constructed one of the most rigid patriarchal societies in the world. Many wives who failed to produce male heirs were abused and treated as domestic servants; some families prayed to spirits to kill off girl children. Because of our culture – which is similar to that of South Korea – we can connect and understand this because it still exists in Nigeria to date.
However, in the 1970s and ’80s, the government embraced an industrial revolution and encouraged women to enter the labour force. Women moved to the city and went to college. They advanced rapidly, from industrial jobs to clerical jobs to professional work. The traditional order began to crumble soon after. As recently as 1985, about half of all women in a national survey said they “must have a son.” That percentage fell slowly until 1991 and then plummeted to just over 15 percent by 2003. The same shift is now beginning in other rapidly industrialising countries such as India and China.
I believe that the reasons behind this shift are obvious. As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success, those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults – not just half of them – have pulled away from the rest.
In 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) devised the Gender, Institutions and Development Database, which measures the economic and political power of women in 162 countries. With few exceptions, the greater the power of women, the greater the country’s economic success. As a result, Aid agencies started to recognise this relationship and have pushed to institute political quotas in about 100 countries, essentially forcing women into power in an effort to improve those countries’ fortunes.
This is true of Liberia where President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf portrayed her country as a sick child in need of her care during her campaign seven years ago. Post genocide Rwanda elected to heal itself by becoming the first country with a majority of women in parliament.
The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today – social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus – are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true.
How is it back home in Nigeria? Things may not be that pronounced, but they are changing. The steady advancement of women in the nation’s socio-economic development and their progressive prominence in national affairs has, in some instance, impacted positively on governance.
From my observations, most Nigerian women now have a winning mentality buoyed by education which has somewhat liberated them. Most do not base their progress on physical beauty alone but now match aspiration with ability, ambition and qualification. Some have argued that Nigeria would be better off if they venture en masse into politics and governance. Will we? Time will tell.
