Dating, marriage and feminism
Recently there was controversy on my twitter feed that involved a popular Nigerian artiste and her husband. The husband was angry that the artiste wasn’t carrying out “womanly duties” in the household such as cooking him regular meals. According to him, she’s too busy recording music and hustling to properly take care of him.
This got me thinking about modern society and the roles that women are expected to play when it comes to their relationship with men. I found it shocking that in the preceding story, the husband expected his wife to still cook and clean despite the fact that she’s the bread winner in the family. It is even more interesting that he saw her inability to perform these “wifely” duties as evidence of her failure, despite the huge success of her musical career.
In our society today, women have started taking their rightful place in all strata of life. They are CEOs and leaders in all industries and walk of life. Arguably the best musician and most dominant athlete on earth right now are both women. However, despite this hard fought progress, one of the many areas where women often still have to settle for the role of a second fiddle is in their relationships and marriages with men.
Beginning at the dating stage, women are expected to play the role of an observer and a subservient to the man. In our society it is still not considered proper when a woman approaches a man she likes. It is considered forward and unladylike, approaching and starting a conversation being the almost exclusive reserve of men. The same goes with marriage proposals. Women are expected to wait for their man to propose. In the biggest decision of her life, a woman is expected to wait and wait until the man asks her, even when they have talked about it and they are both ready.
In both of these situations, the man gets to take the lead, and the woman for the most part is relegated to the role of an observer. This contributes to a power dynamic in relationships that is skewed towards the man from the start. He is making her his girl. He is making her his wife. He is doing all the leading from the onset and all she can do is follow his lead. This skewed power dynamic spills over to marriages.
Marriage as an institution has long embodied the unequal treatment of women in our society. In a traditional marriage, the stereotypical gender roles are codified and exaggerated. The man is supposed to lead and provide, while the woman is supposed to submit to the man and take care of the home. This arrangement has existed for a very long time, and it was probably justifiable decades ago when most women didn’t work and they relied on their husbands for food and shelter. But in today’s society where women make up an ever increasing percentage of the workforce and a bigger share of college enrollees and graduate than men, it is unjustifiable.
We expect women to go to work, earn an income, and still come home and cook and clean like a TV housewife from the 60s. We expect them to be both a provider and a care giver. We measure their success not in their professional success, but how well they play the gender roles we’ve assigned to them.
This is not saying there is anything wrong with the millions of women who are housewives, women who choose to stay at home and care for the kids. There isn’t and these women should be applauded and celebrated for their choice. The important word here being CHOICE.
It should be noted that these gender roles adversely affect men too. They have been conditioned to see themselves as failures if they can’t adequately provide for their family, or if their wives earn more than they do. This puts a lot of pressure on men, and contributes to the end of many marriages.
We need to dispose of these gender roles and move to a new way of thinking. A marriage should be an equal partnership where both couples share responsibility not through gender assignments, but through a common understanding among them. If the wife cooks, it should be as an act of love, not duty. The same goes for the husband taking out the trash. Plenty of women love to cook, and a lot of them don’t mind doing their loved ones laundry, but we shouldn’t expect them to, and it shouldn’t be seen as a failure when they do not.
Women are not a monolith. A lot of them might prefer a marriage with the traditional gender roles, but many of them might also prefer a more dynamic partnership. Both groups of women should be free to pursue their desired kind of relationship without judgment.
Feminism is about equality for women, and at the heart of this quality is freedom of choice. Like Linda Hirshman wrote “Choice is the key, and every woman’s choice must be equally and legally respected, from housewives to CEOs.” We will never achieve true equality until women are able to choose the kind of wives they want to be, rather than conforming to being the kind of wives society expects them to be. We need to do better.
