Women Do

Here's a little snippet from my life that I found very interesting at this time in history where women across the globe are starting to realize and claim their place in society.

Last week, I was apart of a team of four women driving off to the village for a work-related task in the evening. A little context here, this is something that I've done for a couple of years now, in the same country, just a different location. We usually do this in the evenings and come back at midnight most of the time. 
We went on with our business, setting up equipment which includes climbing up the truck to unload from the roof rack and setting up everything, then at the end load up the truck again. This is a very routine task for the women I work with.

After this particular evening, the host of the place we went to called me on the phone to check up on how we faired on our way back home (this was a nice gesture). I told him we arrived safely about half an hour ago and thanked him for being kind. The next words he said caught me a bit off guard, he said: "You know, people back here didn't think you're gonna make it back home in the dark on your own ..." I didn't immediately register what he was referring to, so I was quiet for a bit, then he went on to tell me that since we are women and we had no man with us they were all thinking we won't make it!
Wait a minute, you were expecting to hear that we got stuck on the road (which happens sometimes) so we need help, or what response were they actually expecting? 

Before he told me this, I had not even for a second thought about how we are going to make it without a man around. This is not something I think about at all! I have lived my entire life without thinking, "oh, I need to get some mangoes from the tree but I'll wait till a guy shows up, or this table needs to be moved so we'll find a guy to do it" I always do stuff if I can and if I ask for help it's never based on gender. Same goes for the women I work with, we usually have guys go on this trip too since it's something everyone can do, but it's never about we can't do it without men.
So when I got off the phone I started thinking back on when we climbed up the truck to unload and load stuff and people were watching, when we moved around carrying heavy stuff and people were watching, all this time expecting failure. 

These people represent just a tiny percentage of our world today, these people have lived their entire lives believing lies about women. These people are a product of their social upbringing. These people are our fathers, sisters, brothers, mothers, aunties, uncles, friends. These people are us! We've been raised in a patriarchal community, we've been led to expect very little from women. The ramifications of this poor upbringing are seen in how little we invest in women, how poorly we treat women, how unjustly we judge women.

To be continued ...