Access Bank's W Initiative and the Question of Honouring Women

It is a well-documented (and these days, much-discussed) fact that those who embody the social identity of ‘woman’ are very often prescribed limiting possibilities and are perceived as having a limited ability to contribute meaningfully in the public arena. Expectations of women are generally set fairly low, and any kind of excellence we exhibit or success we achieve is dismissed, minimised or even completely erased. The systemic factors that conspire to confine women to background roles are significant and pervasive, and the result of this is a phenomenon succinctly described by the late environmentalist and Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangari Maathai: “The higher you go, the fewer women there are.”

Still, despite the historical and current exclusion of women from locations of power and the unfortunate reality that our world is generally not set up to enable women to succeed, many of us still find ways to rise to great heights. It is a deeply held belief of mine, supported by the evidence of the odds stacked against us, that women who do make it into positions of corporate, financial or political power work much harder and make more sacrifices than men in similar positions, simply because there are implicit and explicit reminders every step of the way that they do not belong there.

The above is why it is so important that the work that women do -- and the heights we aspire to and attain -- be recognised as inherently valuable; no ifs, ands or buts. Access Bank’s W Initiative seems poised to do just that. Described as having been set up “to support inclusive banking in Nigeria, so that we can support women’s growth and their progress,” the initiative aims to enable women to take advantage of opportunities in business and entrepreneurship, and its W Awards place the achievements of Nigerian women front and center.

A Little Sum'n Sum'n For the Female Anti-Feminist Brigade

So, this short post is really a delayed response to some of the anti-feminist (il-)logic that started to appear on my social media feeds after the #BeingFemaleInNigeria hashtag did it what it did (it did all the things, by the way).

Something I wrote at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Farafina Creative Writing workshop

The first time a man shouted a sexual comment at my daughter, she was 22 months old. We were seeing my friend off, she and I swinging my toddler over muddy potholes, when — 

“Na wa o! Fine girl, na only you get all this yansh?!” 

I recognised the speaker, the joker among the group of laughing men, as the shop owner from whom I bought Ribena and plantain chips for my daughter. He often asked after her. 

“Excuse me?!” 

My friend’s hand drifted to my arm, the light pressure telling me, ‘leave it alone’. Leave it alone. I’ve known since I was in secondary school that often, all you can do is keep walking and hope they go away. I would walk past my house, or go into shops to buy things I didn’t need, or even give them my number just so they would stop bothering me. I’ve been knowing that I’m supposed to leave it alone. It was time to try another tack. 

“Are you alright?! What did you just say?!” 

The men looked at one another incredulously, their faces lined with irritation. 

“Abeg o,” the speaker said. “I was only joking with your baby.” 

I have known for a long time that mothers can’t protect their babies from everything; I was seven years old the first time A Bad Thing happened to me. Still, hearing a grown man refer to the child who he just heckled about her bum as a baby reified that knowledge like nothing else had. My daughter exists in the world in a female body, and so of course she will treated like public property — an object communally belonging to every man who should desire her in any way. The psychology of street harassment is the same as the psychology of rape and every other kind of gendered violence. We believe that the bodies women inhabit are to be colonised, consumed and conquered by men, and that women themselves are responsible for this violence. All female bodies are nothing but vehicles for the expression of men’s sexuality and power, and all gendered violence — the sexualisation of babies, the kidnap of young girls into sexual slavery, marital rape, the murder of transwomen — is a manifestation of that.

We have all been told that there are ways to be both female and safe in this world. The patriarchy teaches us that if a woman follows the rules — if she limits the scope of her life, divorces herself from her own desires, smiles on demand, goes to the bathroom in a group, stays indoors at night — she will be alright. Is there a greater lie than this?

Why are people putting Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal in the same sentence?

I wasn't going to write about Caitlyn Jenner's big reveal because I'm not trans and only have an outsider's grasp of the gender identity/expression issue. However, I changed my mind because it appears that even this basic grasp is more than most have, and if I can contribute to increasing the knowledge pool, I will try to do so. (Also, if I roll my eyes or #headdesk any more than I already have thanks to things I've seen online, I'll probably hurt myself.)

UPDATE: I started writing this piece before the Rachel Dolezal debacle, an issue that allowed people to create false equalisations between race and gender by arguing that it is 'hypocritical' to be accepting of transgender people while rejecting 'transracial' people. Being a Nigerian living in Nigeria, my knowledge of race relations, like my knowledge of being transgender, is the product of research, but I will do my best to tackle this as well. 

Before I continue, I have to say: if you're unwilling to accept the humanity of all people, their right to exist, to determine the course of their lives without harming others, and to be treated with respect, regardless of any identity(-ies) that may be different from what you consider 'normal' -- if you ever even feel the need to say that you will never 'accept' another person's existence because it doesn't fit your worldview or beliefs, fix yourself.

If you don't 'accept' the existence of trans people and are unwilling to develop the empathy, knowledge and self-awareness necessary to get you to where you realise that your 'non-acceptance' is actually bigotry, then you are contributing in one way or another to a culture of transphobia that literally ends trans people's lives.