“If you educate a man, you educate and individual.  If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.” - Dr Kwegyir Aggrey (1872-1927)

The older you grow as a young person, you begin to think a lot more about the person you want to be, the legacy you want to leave and the kind of parent you want to be if you were to be blessed with that responsibility.  In doing so I have found myself thinking a lot about my mother as my primary example/role model of what a woman should be.  My mother has always been a no nonsense woman, but at the same time loving, caring and hardworking.  Sometimes in our conversations she says to me, I really wonder about you and how it is that you came to be a feminist.  This of course, got me thinking. How did I come to value the feminist movement so much? And now it has hit me, it was her all along. My mother.  Being a family of girls, my mother never had a concept of the girls do this and the boys do that, if something needed to be done, and you were there not doing anything, you best believe she would make you do it.  I remember one holiday my cousins came over to stay with us.  That holiday my mother woke us all up at 5am every day, made each of us a cup of coffee, sat down with us and did bible reading.  She would make sure that by 6am we were done, at which point she would allocate our chores, the girls were to go outside and work in the garden, whilst the boys were to remain in the house, sweep the house using a mustvairo (Shona for a hand broom) despite us owning two vacuum cleaners, and after that dust the house and make breakfast. The next day we would swap, the boys in the garden, the girls in the house, and this continued every day for the whole holiday.  I remember once one of my male cousins dared to comment that working in the house was women’s work, at which point my mother very firmly let him know that there is no such thing.  The purpose of her making us do all of that was for us to see that girls can do anything just as much as boys can and vice versa.  That as a girl, your whole life need not be dependent on a man, do something for yourself.  As a man, you must also be able to run your own household and be able to do things for yourself so you do not view women and use women as mere objects only meant to jump to fulfil your every need.  Be able to be an independent individual.  Coming from this kind of upbringing, it offends me, it bothers me, and i cannot accept it, when the world tells me, I must remain in this box because I am a woman, and a man must be put on a pedestal because he is a man.  It offends me. It offends my moral conscious.  Patriarchy offends me.  Purposefully or unwittingly my mother planted something in me, and now it is bearing fruit.  I am a feminist not because I wish to see women over power men, but because I wish to see my biological make up being viewed just as that, and not being used to determine what I can and cannot do, what I must or must not say, or how I should or should not think.  Because above being a woman, I am a human being, just like any man.  South African novelist and essayist Nadine Gordimer once said something to the effect that she did not view feminism as a issues or a cause exclusive to women, but rather as moral That human morals should move us to sympathise with a woman who has been raped not just because she is a woman, but because she is a person, and I absolutely agree with that.  We really need to rid ourselves of this notion that certain things are only for women and others for men.  And we need to get rid of this concept that men can’t be bothered about women’s rights.  There is no reason why a man cannot be a feminist.  When after all it is a movement for the equality of everyone.  We can’t change things be denying the existence of patriarchy. No, patriarchy exists.  We see it every day.  But rather we must counter it with feminism, where a woman can be cherished and respected just as much as any man.  Now for this to happen, it is not just a matter of putting legislation in place.  There is a bigger picture, we need to transform society.  Hence the quote stated above.  I f patriarchy says a woman’s place is at home with the children, then we must use that to effect change where it is possible.  By educating women as to their rights and about equality, they will in turn teach their children, who will then go out and effect change.  If a mother’s biggest influence is with her children then she must use that influence to teach her daughter that she can do anything she sets her mind to and treat all people with respect, and she can teach her son the same, and emphasise that a woman is not there to be abused, belittled and taken for granted.  And ultimately that patriarchy offends the essence of human morals.