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Women miners follow proceedings during a women in mining workshop held at a lodge in Bulawayo in this file photo

Bongiwe Nkomazana
SINCE I write on women issues and get inspiration from my fellow ladies, I thought it would be fitting for me to honour my muses and write a piece in line with International Women’s Day (March 8) and Women’s Month to celebrate us. Let’s rewind to how Women’ Day came about. The first International Women’s Day was in 1911 after an International Socialist Women’s Conference was organised and a proposal of the establishment of an annual Women’s Day was placed by them the previous year. In 1975, the United Nations started to celebrate International Women’s Day.

Today, International Women’s Day is celebrated unfailingly in most countries while still ignored blatantly in some. To some, it is the perfect time to protest against gender inequalities and to some it is just a beautiful time to acknowledge and celebrate womanhood in its entirety.

When I think of International Women’s Day, what pops up in my head first is a picture of a well built woman standing in a posture that demands respect and attention. Almost like she is Wonder Woman, you know. I think that’s what I associate the day with, just women empowerment.

Women have been fighting for recognition for the longest time and the more you read on how International Women’s Day came about, the more you appreciate the foundation that the women that came before us laid out for us, the women of today.

I always joke and say that thank God He did not create me during the war times because I can’t run and I’m just scared of violence. However, the truth that is continually revealed to me is that wars might end in the sense of guns and muskets being put down but they continue through people’s attitudes, behaviours and mindsets.

I love my culture; in fact, because I love my culture and traditions so much, I understand and give other cultures the benefit of the doubt as I do mine. That being said, I would like to put not only my culture and my people on the spot but all those cultures that still, even passively, bring women down by putting men on a pedestal. Yes, men have some attributes or characteristics that women do not possess but women also have strengths that men will never ever have. I will give the obvious example of how a man is stronger than a woman physically. That is a given. However, who says that men are superior to us, being mindful of our other strengths like endurance and resilience just to name the two out of many others, based on the fact that their punch causes more pain.

Look at it this way, it might be neat and will come in handy that one can carry a rock but what use is that ability if you can’t decide where to place it or what to do with the rock. I’ve been told that I’m biased but let us face the facts.

We might kick and scream as much as we want but women are usually the brain and men are the muscle. And these two can’t exist successfully separately. My point is; all we want is to be recognised as equals. I mean in all our intellect, beauty, childbearing abilities with menstrual cramps included, forgiving nature and steadfastness which would logically make us superior, all we really want at the end of the day is just equality.

On that note of child bearing, allow me to just throw in a caution to mothers. Someone once told me that mothers of sons are the real problem. Being a mother to a son myself I asked her what she meant.

She explained that when we raise our sons, we make them believe they are the best thing that ever happened to this world, the be all and end all. I’m guilty of that, in fact, it was so bad that I tainted the women empowerment national anthem “Who runs the world (Girls)” by Beyonce and replaced the word girls, with boys.

In trying to build my son’s confidence I may have been creating a male chauvinist. I’ve since rectified my mistakes though and I now tell him that girls can do everything that boys can do. Let’s teach our sons never to lay hands on a woman and that true kings are those that respect, protect and support their queens. That’s where it should all start in my opinion.

March 8 and the whole month of March in some countries has become a platform, or on a more grandeur scale, a movement in which women can, at the very top of their lungs, express how phenomenal they are and demand that power be given to them as well.

Despite the cultures that still believe that a woman is as good as a child therefore her opinions don’t matter or she should be spanked when she disagrees with the big mighty man of the house, the work of women empowerment has made great strides.

They’re not as many as we would like still but the increasing numbers of female leaders and just women in the forefront is a plus. The United Nations has some targets that we can all be a part of achieving and they include an end to all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere, to eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation and to eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

There’s a lot of real work to be done. It’s painful to think that girls and women somewhere in this world we’re living in are going through the most daunting situations in the 21st century.

I’ll leave you with the words of the great musician Shaggy from Kingston, Jamaica, “She’ll put a smile upon your face and take you to a brighter place so don’t you underestimate… the strength of a woman”.