Women Empowerment -By Idris Hassan

I’ll always be an advocate for the empowerment of women. It’s not because I do not want the men to be empowered or trying to be feministic. It’s because most times, the effect of divorce is more brutal and devastating on women than men. We find situations where some women who are married with four or seven children, get divorced eventually and are left to suffer or return back to their parents home where there are no space for them because they have nothing to fall back to. Sometimes, you see a woman who is completely a house wife with plenty children suffering with children immediately her husband dies. She only gets not to suffer when she gets a work doing, learned a trade that she’s getting something from or have grown up children taking care of her. Otherwise, she’s really going to find life difficult and brutal.

These days, death rate in men are more than that of women and should we not empower our women because we’re so much in love with the patriarchal hegemony we’re enjoying as men in African society and forget the future? Albeit, I find it very devastating when I see men bitter, and sad when their wives are getting empowered and making it and sometimes, they get jealous and divorce them or make life miserable for them. The truth remains that, the credit of your wives success would surely go to you as husbands and you should be proud of that.  They would contribute to the family well-being and also support in their own ways. Your wives and children would not suffer when you eventually kick the bucket.

I’ve witnessed a situation where a man came to his wife’s school, collected her certificate and tore it. When asked why? He was of the view that he doesn’t want her to stop respecting him because she has gotten a degree and he doesn’t. It’s not bad if you sponsor your wives to their master’s degree, PhD, and professorship. It’s a thing of joy if you have the means to do so.  Some men marry their wives when they’ve graduated from colleges or medical schools and then after marriage, they stop them from working and remain total house wives. Since you know she went to school and you didn’t sponsor her education why are you not wanting her to work or practicalized what she learnt? Some men will even sponsor their wives to school and after they’ve graduated, deny them from working or eating from what they learnt. Why sponsor her to school at first? They’re a lot of things that needed to be addressed in the northern society.