2020 should mark the beginning of the end of patriarchy - once and for all
An international survey released this year revealed that about 70% of women in South Africa keenly aspire to become entrepreneurs.
The Veuve Clicquot International Women Entrepreneurship Barometer revealed that about 80% of female entrepreneurs indicated they believed the support of a network of female entrepreneurs was required for success.
SA has several women entrepreneurs and women-focused associations and organisations such as the International Women’s Forum South Africa, the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa, Black Businesswomen’s Association, Fine Women Business Network, South African Council for Businesswomen and the South African Women Entrepreneurs Network.
According to the barometer, no less than 91% of respondents surveyed felt that women entrepreneurs are inspiring, and thus were keen to follow in their footsteps and become entrepreneurs themselves.
Considering that women are about 52% of the population, why are women not running the SA economy, if such a high percentage of the female population wish to become entrepreneurs?
I would proffer that the barrier of patriarchy is the major stumbling block in their way.
What I mean is that, women have been trained by a patriarchal society to sustain the patriarchy that keeps them at a lower position than men, when in truth, women are far superior beings, over and above men.
In other words, as noted by the author of Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, women’s acceptance of inferiority to men, patriarchy, is not due to their nature but as a result of their training: how they have been socially engineered for centuries.
Estes writes: “Though her soul requires seeing, the culture around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.”
When according to legend, in the Garden of Eden, Adam’s original redhead wife, Lilith, refused to lie beneath him during intercourse and insisted they lie side-by-side as equals, she was booted out of the sacred garden by Adam. Lilith was then replaced by the more pliable Eve, who accepted patriarchy, and lay beneath Adam during carnal communication.
It is the same for contemporary women who refuse to accept patriarchy in the household, which keeps them from thriving as entrepreneurs, and in all other fields of endeavour.
From an excerpt from Boardroom Dancing authored by Anglo American SA chairman Nolitha Fakude, and published in the Sunday Independent this year, we learned that as Fakude’s calibre in business rose, she began to lose the support of her husband who had once been her greatest cheer-leader.
She had dared to be a woman free of patriarchy and thus lost her husband. She is not the only woman to lose love because she rose to her natural position of superiority as a woman.
Most men, even in the supposedly refined corporate world and men in the upper echelons of society, still believe that women belong to a stratum lower than that of a man.
Put simply, the dreams of many a woman who wishes to be an entrepreneur meet their death in the household from which her greatest support must emerge, yet it does not, unsurprisingly.
Therefore, it is for women to now ensure that they are the masters of their own destiny.
As Estes writes, that women are “hungry...to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.”
But, for the most part, women have had for the longest time, to make a hard choice a la Hillary Rodham Clinton, to either comply with the lower position men want for them and be exiled from their own souls and dreams, or to fully embrace their souls and dreams, and thus be exiled from others they love dearly - and deeply.
Thus, Estes suggests that women should learn to see their scars as doors to several new beginnings which will make them far greater than they have imagined they could ever be in the world.
“That is, to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves,” writes Estes.
My take is that women should learn to accept being exiled from others to achieve the greatness of which they are naturally capable, far more than me, a man.
It will take a really wise man to support and help elevate this greatness.
Essential, therefore, it will always be, for women to insist on the full and ample space to express their power, in the household, in business, and the wider society.
Yet, the household is the main battleground. If women do not force matters in the household to enable them to thrive, they will not realise genuine equality in any other area of life or endeavour.
If gender equality is not won in the household, it will take no real root anywhere else.
In SA, the household is overwhelmingly patriarchal accross races and cultures, as reflected worldwide, with a few exceptions, with gender equality being more a rarity, than a given.
Thus, in SA, as all over the world, enlightened women and men must declare 2020 as the beginning of the end of patriarchy.
Estes writes: “Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation.”
I ask: Why accept patriarchy any longer?