As we round up Women’s Month.
I must preface this post by saying that as far as all things bright and beautiful go, there’s nothing wrong with being a Cinderella.
I myself, desperately wanted to be a Cinderella in my early teens. The model Cinderella wasn't Disney's though, it was another girl in my class. I’m exaggerating now, but she could breathe slightly laboured and people would fall over themselves at her service. For a long time, I unwittingly laboured under the impression that likeability was synonymous with getting things done. I will find out later on, that it is not. I’ll leave this paragraph and turn my attention to the theme of this year. #Inspireinclusion.
Historically, women have come a long way. A quick aperture through the corridors of history, helps us appreciate how far we’ve come. Women in biblical times could be given out to strangers to be raped. A father could give out his daughter to strangers to protect a male stranger he welcomed into his house who is at risk of being sodomised. The humanity of the woman was dispensable and debatable. The stranger's safety was not.
In Virginia Woolf’s time, women couldn’t enter libraries. Men wrote the books about women. If I had been born at that time, I know I surely would have lost my mind.
Until the late 19th century in England, married women couldn’t own property. They couldn’t legally point to a thing in this world and say, ‘I own that.’ The first time I was taught this in commercial law class, I couldn’t comprehend the absurdity of it. Based on biological differences alone, doors were closed and absolutes drawn.
The land of the free and brave didn’t grant suffrage rights to women until the 20th century. The right to be voted for is also valid on paper in many countries, and according to a 2023 Pew Research Centre report,13 women currently serve as the head of government out of the 193 member states of the United Nations. 13 is definitely better than 0.
When somebody says ‘gentlemen and gentlemen in skirts’ in a gathering of law students in my school, I’m reminded that women were not permitted to be lawyers initially. But here I am only a few months from bagging my law degree. Every so often, I silently thank every hand who made this possible.
What a long way we have come since primordial times. We really do have girls in schools getting an education. Women, founding businesses, leading organisations and nations, setting world records. Everywhere ‘success’ can be discussed, someone there looks like me, who probably has an app on their phone tracking their 35-day cycle - a role model.
Compared to what we didn’t have a couple of decades ago, we have more than enough to deliver a better society to the next generation.
We have more than enough than to wait around for someone to include us.
We have enough inspiration.
We have more than enough to move from victims to victors.
