Women’s successes, no matter the magnitude, are generally overshadowed by political events.
As demonstrated in recent weeks, for instance, media platforms were abuzz with headlines such as Trump’s ‘comeback rally’, the Myanmar coup, and our own rolling political soap opera.
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All this at the expense of Mme Ngozi Okonjo-lealas’ elevation to the summit of the World Trade Organization.
Ngozi’s rise to directorship level at the world organisation is significant for African women, who are often overlooked or simply used to tick compliance boxes.
But, truth be told, the sprinkling of black faces in the upper echelons of these bodies represents a tiny fraction of the talent the continent continues to produce.
The reason women’s accomplishments only makes a tiny footnote in world news today is because even the media is still patriarchal.
Women don’t sell unless they are portrayed in their vulnerable state. The divorce settlement victory of a Chinese woman is a case in point.
After a five-year marriage rolled to a halt, the court correctly ruled that she should be compensated for the menial job she had been doing in the house during that period.
While the payout was ridiculously low, what the court decision did achieve was to put a spotlight on the plight of housewives.
There’s no doubt that housewives help keep the household fires burning, metaphorically and otherwise.
Just think of the sacrifices women made when men were either exiled or in jail pre-1994.
Think of the unsung heroines who kept households together when their husbands and sons were forced to extract gold and diamond out of the belly of the Earth.
Even the advent of democracy has not eased the struggles of women, because the majority are still housebound.
Today women perform the bulk of household work while their husbands are hanging out with ‘the boys’.
Increasingly, women double up as breadwinners as many men are squeezed out like toothpaste from their jobs. The conveyor belt of unemployment only shifts the burden of want onto the shoulders of women who have to find a way to feed the family.
It is for this reason that the idea of compensating women is tantalising, but is it really desirable?
At face value it would be justifiable compensating women because such a move would restore their dignity.
It is sad that some women still have to crawl to their partners to beg for sanitary towels. Women know what they want. So, issues involving women should be championed and decided upon by women and not men. An obvious example is lobola.
It is women who should decide whether lobola is outdated and not the cynics who equate it with their ‘commoditisation’.
Self-respecting women know the value of lobola, in the same way that self-respecting men do.
Dr Khaya Gqibithole is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Zululand
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