Lately, I have been obsessed about reading
biographies of famous women activists, what they had to do/say to get their
message out there, the challenges they faced and the victories they celebrated.
Having grown up in a generation where the
revitalization of the women's movement was the ‘in-thing’, I used to think it
was a yesteryear phenomenon, just until now. I was surprised to learn from the
National Women's History that it goes way back in the 1840s, marking 13th of July
1848 as its evolution.
On that sweltering summer day in upstate New York,
a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with
four women friends. When the course of their conversation turned to the
situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations
placed on her own situation under America's new democracy. Stanton's friends
agreed with her, passionately.
I think that this was definitely not the first
small group of women who gathered to have such a conversation, but it was the
first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program.
And also the likes of Rosa Parks, who was a modest
seamstress on her way home from work when she refused to give up her seat on a
bus in Montgomery, Alabama. That single act of defiance on December 1st 1955 is
remembered as the start of the civil rights movement and she is respectfully
remembered as the mother of the civil rights movement.
Today, even in Africa, we have lots of Stantons and
Parks, who are patriotic women, sharing the ideal of creating a world, where
women can enjoy equal rights with men. They see their mission as helping fellow
women, who can’t speak for themselves and who can not keep promises of better
and more egalitarian lives. They are living the legacy of women's rights that
eight generations of women before them gave their best to achieve. Alice Paul,
that intrepid organizer who first wrote out the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923,
said, "I always feel the movement is sort of a mosaic. Each of us puts in
one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end."
African women, acting together, adding their small
stones to the grand mosaic, have increased their rights against all odds,
nonviolently, from an initial position of powerlessness. They have a lot to be
proud of in this heroic legacy, and a great deal to celebrate. They have
clearly been successful in irrevocably changing the circumstances and hopes of
fellow women.
In the world of work, large numbers of women have
entered the professions, the trades, and businesses of every kind. Ranks of the
clergy, the politicians, the specialists, the military, the newsroom and else
where have been opened up for women from their ‘traditional’ roles of house
chores.
However, though much has been accomplished, a lot
still remains to be done since substantial barriers to the full equality of
Africa's women still remains before their freedom. The remaining injustices can/are
being tackled daily in the courts and conference rooms, in homes and
organizations, local communities, workplaces and playing fields of different
states in the continent.
And with this entire going on, we should never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world
because indeed, it's the only thing that ever has! That was Margaret Mead's
conclusion after a lifetime of observing very diverse cultures around the
world. Her insight has been borne out time and again throughout the development
of this whole movement.
