The students in the English class put on a play. In the skit, a man beat his wife who he thought was cheating on him. The woman calls the police, the police show up in two seconds – suspension of disbelief, I know – and the man was taken to the police headquarters for questioning. And what was the questioning about? If the woman had really cheated on him. That was the truth deemed relevant for the investigation in the skit. It turns out that the woman was not cheating on anyone, that the “other man” was, in fact, her brother….or not really her brother but also not her lover…or something. It was hard to follow and there were a lot of plot twists I did not entirely understand. But the one thing I did get was that the man was guilty of abuse only because, as it turned out, the woman had not been cheating. The thing with skits that are meant to show “social messages” is that they are, at times, formulaic, which can mean that one part of the formula is missing.
I was disturbed, but something inside me did not have the energy or patience to explain that, in Rwandan law, you cannot beat your wife even if she is cheating on you. I will need to bring it up with the teacher, I think. Or the teacher who teaches General Paper, the Rwandan equivalent of Civics. I was at once impressed that they put on a skit about women’s rights and also upset that idea of “rights” was not entirely understood as independent of how we might judge the moral actions of a woman in her personal life.
There was a female police officer who came to speak at the assembly for International Women’s Day. After lots of back-and-forth translation fumbling, her official title came out as “Assistant Inspector of Police District Chief of Gender and Balance Values” (GBV). I think. I might be off about that. I have never seen a female police woman or officer in this particular sector of district. It is always unnerving when, within an organization, the representative meant to assure equal opportunity for an oppressed group is also the only representative from that oppressed group. She mostly discussed everything that Kagami had done and about the benefits of the laws to protect women.
Her presence and speech were excellent and much needed, if only as a role model to women that they can go into law enforcement and security.
The original Women’s Day was created as a day to protest injustices, not only to celebrate successes. One student at Family Time said that it was silly to have a Women’s Day – “Are the other days all for men?” And, indeed, if the day is only to celebrate how great women are, it is a bit silly. If, however, it is a day that everyone is meant to discuss the shortcomings in providing equal rights, it makes more sense: every other day is not to discuss the shortcomings in the rights of the male population, because that isn’t really such a pressing issue. Every other day, perhaps, can be to celebrate the rights we have obtained, when we go to work, walk around freely unaccompanied, and are, as a general day-to-day typical experience, physically secure. While celebrating Women’s Day may genuinely be a sign that women in a given country are obtaining more rights, only celebrating the rights already obtained, and not mentioning the shortcomings, may hinder a continuation of progress.
On the other hand, shop owners all seem to be women. I really need to find out how many shops in Rubona are owned by women. There seems to be a complete acceptance that women should make lots of money by themselves. Women running the shops have their babies plopped down next to them. They occasionally breastfeed when necessary, then go back to selling things to customers. And, quite frankly, the babies may help bring customers. I mean, they must. There is one shop that may have slightly more acidic milk – it sometimes gets just to bubbly for my taste. But the shop owner has a little tiny baby girl – not her own, I don’t think, I have never seen her pregnant. The baby just sits there, has just learned to smile and has dimples. Her name is Nadia. And of course you choose Nadia’s Shop.
Men take care of their kids – this is something that really stands out. Not as much as the women, who tie the babies to their backs. But I do sometimes see boys tying babies to their backs and men carrying their babies alone.
More women are working and taking managerial roles in masonry. While it is a bit frustrating to meet girls who are going into vocational training in construction because they cannot afford upper secondary school, it is nice to see that they are progressing in their respective vocational professions.
All in all, progression in women’s rights in Rwanda has been absolutely phenomenal. The police offer who came to speak at the assembly was not exaggerating. I would not have caught the sad misunderstanding of what women’s rights are if students did not learn about new laws to protect abused women. It is not that the students had a particular opinion of the woman’s rights if the woman had, in fact, been cheating. They just wanted to focus on the completely innocent woman who had done nothing wrong at all and how her rights were violated in a way that, today, was inexcusable. Inconsistencies are a sign that some areas are improving much quicker than others, which is a sign that there are major areas of improvements in women’s rights. Hopefully, as literacy and education improves, the inconsistencies will diminish and these improvements will be across the board.
No comments:
Post a Comment