By Megha Rana
Gender stereotypes are generalizations and/or assumptions made in regards to roles that women and men play, respectively, in a culture. While they differ from culture to culture and region to region, a shared and defining trait is how deeply ingrained these stereotypes have become in individual cultures and larger societies around the world.
In Kenya and other East African countries, the traditional female role has been to run the household, to both grow and cook food, to bear and raise children, to carry water, and to be obedient to the husband. In general, children have spent a majority of their time with their mothers or female relatives. In large families, it was not uncommon for older female siblings to help raise the children, sometimes pausing or completely sacrificing their education.
The conventional male role has been to protect the family, providing safety and material support. While the family structure depends to some degree on the tribe, men have generally headed the household, earning the majority of the money and making the important household decisions.
Enter the modern, interconnected world and the pressures of modernization. Today in East Africa, men and women alike are growing out of their ‘traditional’ roles.
In Kenya, for example, there is a husband who works as a cattle broker and his wife is a schoolteacher. The husband does work which a decade ago would have been unthinkable: He washes the dishes, does the laundry, and brings home firewood. Why? Because his schoolteacher wife is pregnant with their second child and he believes they should share the household workload. Or consider a retired secondary school principal in a rural region who has trained his wife in finances and now involves his wife in important family financial decisions. He is also helping his daughters develop their own voices through financial and leadership training.
Most notable in East Africa is the growing numbers of female entrepreneurs. Women are beginning to create their own solutions to problems, both by developing community services and businesses. For instance, a local teacher in Tanzania saw a need for greater educational services in her community and spearheaded the movement to build a nonprofit school that she now leads.
Increasingly, as climate change impacts the planet, gender roles must shift to keep cultures alive. In Kenya, women from the ethnic Maasai tribe were forbidden to work. Home was their sole sphere of influence. Men were responsible for earning money, mainly through cattle rearing. However, recent recurring droughts have devastated many of the herds, resulting in women creating trades such as beadwork to provide a steady income. In fact, in some Masaai communities it is now the women who go to work while the men stay at home to care for the home and family.
A balance in long-held gender roles will take time. Altering centuries-long societal norms will require patience and developing a community-wide tolerance for discomfort. However, with the speed of change in our world no one is immune from shifting roles. As Robin Sharma eloquently sums it up, “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, but beautiful in the end.”
Sources:
https://www.voanews.com/a/kenya-changing-gender-roles/6366764.html
https://brighter-tz-fund.org/Blog/4902092
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/rural-kenya-traditional-gender-roles-equality/