A woman's work is never done...

So I kind of fell of the face of the planet for a bit eh? Lol, sorry folks, didn’t mean to be so MIA, the last month has been…well… hard to explain, thus the lack of posts.

I’ve been putting a lot of effort into trying to understand the way RUFA works and how I can have some positive impact on the organization, which has been challenging but I’ve been learning and growing a whole bunch.

First of all I wanted to respond to some questions my good friend colleen asked me recently (miss you girl). In our EWB workshops we’ve talked a lot about gender roles, and how important they are to consider when attempting development work. Specifically the question was do women actually feel discriminated against, and do they want to see change?
So I’m not going to claim to have the answer to that question, but I can talk about some of the experiences I had and things I’ve seen here.
So let me tell you about my sister Chrissy. She’s the wife of my host mother’s eldest son Maduna, who both live with us, and is my best friend here. She’s the one who’s helped me figure out how to do everything (ie. hand wash all my clothes), explains what’s going on at home when I’m all kinds of confused, and has helped me form relationships with other women in the community. She’s a year younger than me, but is already a wife and a mother, so while we’re at different points in our lives, we get along great and laugh and joke together. When I’m home, I help out as much as I can with the daily chores as well as looking after the baby Jessica. The family hierarchy is such that most of the grunt work falls to Chrissy as the female in-law. What does that mean? That means sweeping around the house, fetching water from the borehole down the street, preparing most of the meals for the entire household (7 adults – not exactly light work), doing all the dishes, doing all the laundry for her husband, herself, and Jessica, and being 100% responsible for caring for Jessica, which means unless myself or one of my brothers are around to hand her off to, Chrissy’s doing all these things with Jessica strapped to her back. She hopes to one day attend the training center in a neighbouring village to become a carpenter, which is pretty cool, and I think a little unconventional. Before that can happen though she must wait until her and Maduna are financially independent, have their own home, and have enough extra income for the school fees.
This is what it means to be a woman in the village. And let me tell you, its bloody hard work. Add in things like preparing the maize for the maize mill (about a four day process), or in areas where there is no maize mill pounding the maize into a flour by hand, raising 2 or 3 toddlers, and fetching firewood from god knows how far, and you start to get a bigger picture. Now imagine you husband’s passed away, or left you as is increasingly the case for Malawian women, and you’re now responsible for growing or buying enough food to feed your family and providing the basic necessities, and if possible, generating enough extra income for school fees for the children. Or maybe your sister has died from AIDS and now you’ve got 7 children instead of 3 to provide and care for. Or the youngest one has malaria but you don’t have the money for the medication, the doctor’s fees, or the transport to reach the doctor.
I’m not saying men don’t work hard too, especially farmers, but the onus is on the women to create a functioning household. This is why many development projects focus on making these tasks easier, or are directed at providing more opportunities for women. But I’m taking it a bit too big picture; let’ take it back to direct experiences.

I’ve asked various people what gender equality means to them, and why they think it is important. The answers and attitudes towards this topic have surprised me in a lot of situations, and I don’t want to generalize too much, but a common response is that it will make development happen faster, or that the developed countries tell us its important and they must know, because they’re developed. From what I’ve seen it’s not tied to human or civil rights, it’s seen as an externally driven, necessary step to being considered civilized. And these responses are from women as well as men.

I should note here, that most of this is based on experiences in a rural setting, and I think things are a little different in an urban setting. In a village though, most women marry during or just after secondary school, so it’s difficult to distinguish between being a woman and being a mother.

I could talk for a long time about a lot of factors related to this subject, and the things I’ve seen or heard about here, so feel free to follow up with me when I get back. A big question I have though: is that if you change these well defined and understood roles for men and women, or more accurately husbands and wives, how much would you destroy the culture itself, and what kind of gaps do you create in the social infrastructure.
I feel full of questions about what it means to be a woman anywhere in the world, and more specifically what it means to be a mother.
The deep respect I have for Malawian mothers, however, is something I will carry with me, and my hope in the future is that to be one is not such a struggle for so many.