GENDER INEQUALITY; IT ALL BEGAN WITH LANGUAGE- By Peter K'ouma

   

 “We are despised, stepped on, spat on, and unfairly treated by culture, religion, psyche and history. Hath a woman hands, legs, cardiac, feelings, just as a man? If you pricketh us, don’t we bleed? And if you tickleth us, don’t we laugh?” How many occasions have we heard of these words? Of course severally! Don’t you feel something hidden in the words? – Inequality, unfairness and unjust of gender.

After the title and the first paragraph, I know you are rolling back your sight globes to know the author’s sex. It is a masculine name bored by a man. Of course I have always written several articles before echoing the feelings of a woman, but still that doesn’t categorize me as one. I am born of a woman; all my younger siblings are girls; three-quarters of my friends are ladies; my first born and the only one I have brought onto this planet is a girl; pink and blue are my favorite colors; and Chris Mukasa will affirm that K’ouma has a shrill voice but, am proud of being a man. A man, born, raised and inducted into a blended culture. For the sake of my sisters, girlfriends, mother, aunts, nieces, cousins, daughter and my love, I hereby venture to scrutinize the genesis of the above scribbled disease that cripples our society at large.

I was reflecting onto my first linguistic lecture in the University of Nairobi and mirrored on the Norwegian, Anglo-Saxon, and influence of Italian, Greek and Scandinavian languages in the emergence and development of English language. The speculation landed me in three different ways in which English language must have engineered the existence of gender parity. I realized that language defines, ignores and deprecates women.

Definition

Language defines women in reference to occupational terms. Women are referred to as ‘wives’. The term ‘wife’ is in relation to a man. This means that women are defined according to the presence or absence of authority (Husband). Again, occupational modifiers have been constructed to redefine a woman; lady justice, woman doctor. When we say justice so and so, it automatically echoes a man/ men. Why do we find it difficult associating the term ‘doctor’ to ladies without adding the term ‘woman’? And when naming sexes? Experiment uttering this; ‘women and men’, ‘she or he’, ‘girls and boys’………………….. We will always unconsciously bring the feminine name or pronoun after the masculine one. We will say ‘Adam and Eve’ and not ‘Eve and Adam’. My predecessor linguistic Wilson Cohen(1560) once said, ‘ the worthier is preferred and set before’ a statement that I have found to be very sexist and hate with passion.

When a woman is married, why must
she drop the maiden name and get the husband’s thrust upon her? Why aren’t men acquiring the Nyamburas, chebets, Gatis, Adhiambos, Carolynes and Veras upon marriage?

This definition denies a woman maturity and capability.

Deprecating

 Most of the words in English in reference to a woman have proved to reduce the woman fraternity in terms of quality, which translates into the way we view her. For example, we will describe a woman’s work as pretty or nice while a man’s work will be echoed as mastery or brilliant. Don’t you recognize superiority in the latter pair?

The words master, prince, lord, father have retained their stately meaning while mistress, lady, madam and dame have acquired a debased meaning.

In the oxford dictionary, there are 222 terms that refer to sexually promiscuous women but only 22 for men. These trivialization of women move into such words that have got endings such as –ette, -ess e.g. usherette, poetess; and they continue deprecating women.

Ignores

Words like chairman, spokesman……. Are generally masculine and refer to both genders. These words are meant to be used generally for both. Do we? Unconsciously, they are only used in reference to men. From the biblical view, the pronoun (He) typically refers to mixed sexes. We ignore women in its usage and yet it’s not sex specific.

Why is this issue? Somebody might imagine that Peter K’ouma needs a writing favour from the feminine world. Nope, will be my response. We (both sexes) blame this unjust treatment on our mode of communication (language). The Kenyan constitution stipulating 1/3 of women in parliament has failed to bridge the gap from our 2013 general election. In my next issue, I shall set to explain how we can use language (writing & speech) again to mirror the solution to this scourge.