It is a man’s world despite women forming close to 50 per cent of the world’s population. It is a man’s world not merely in terms of men getting paid more for the same work, it is a man’s world even at the subconscious level when we use words that place women implicitly lower than the male of the species.
If the expressions ‘Be a man’, ‘Be manly’, ‘Man yourself to face the ordeal’, are terms that exhort us to face hurdles without fear, then it is about time that we come to look upon and speak of ‘woman’ representing, figuratively and metaphorically, the finer emotions so necessary to make a human being complete.
To be courageous and fearless in facing hurdles, one needs to be nurtured, loved and given emotional support in the early stages of childhood.
It is a scientific fact that if children are not loved and nurtured in the first six years of their lives, their development is delayed which can prevent them from living up to their full potential. And women have a greater share of this ‘burden’ than men.
If logic, practicality and clinical nature (all traits of the head) are personified in ‘man’, then a ‘woman’ must surely represent the heart—the nurture, love, emotion and feelings that should be allowed to freely bloom in every individual.
Logic and indeed cold practicality can easily be reproduced and duplicated by a computer. Artificial intelligence is taking over our life slowly. However, emotion, nurture, love and the finer feelings in a human being can never be truly replicated by any machine. Can one’s love for our newborn be delegated to a robot?
And yet, we have continued to decry and denigrate the role of women. We hear of increasing numbers of cases of violence against women and of them being treated as objects.
Humanity is in conflict with itself! It is as if each male is trying to suppress emotions that are inherent in him. It is as if freely expressing feelings are a sign of weakness, a sign of effeminacy.
In recognition of International Women’s Day that just passed, let the men of today aspire to be more ‘woman-like’ and erase any and every negative connotations that may immediately come up when such claims to being more ‘woman-like’ are voiced.
It is not merely language that needs an overhaul, but also the thinking process if society is to be erased of the thought of treating women as being anything other than equal to man—bringing to dawn the day when violence against women becomes completely alien to our nature.