Reflect with Linda: RESIDENT EVIL… SEXISM! Battle of the sexes!!

Like any other day, a female staff is on her way to her office building. As she walks down the main road, a head pops out a moving car window and yells out to her: “Nice legs!” Later that day she receives a text from one of the men in her presentation group task who she barely knows: “Hey beautiful we should definitely have a beer sometime”………… (Winks)
Meanwhile there are strings of commercials on television of women who seem to be enjoying using kitchen or toilet/bathroom cleaning products or bathing their children with a new kind of antiseptic soap, or trying out a new kind of seasoning powder and rows and rows of billboard with women  in all shapes and kinds wearing  lingerie spotting extra-long weaves and just basking in the ambience of nothingness….   on the contrary we have the other kinds of commercials, the type that centers on the business side of life, where men spotting clean crisp suits looking dapper and sealing high net worth deals, or playing golf with  very good looking “well groomed” friends, or some guy making a conscious business decision on where to bank his money…..the former examples with the women build upon a growing sense that the major roles for women in her society is as a “carer” in the home or the nurturer of every relationship or best still an “object” to be desired………………………SEXISM!
1) Sexism is the prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s sex. 2)attitude or conditions or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
Many women have the same experience of sexism every day. This is because sexism has been  institutionalized at all levels of society — in the workplace, the home and family, our parliaments, the welfare and judicial systems even in institutions like universities, such that we hardly ever notice it,  Our society relates to women in such a way that it discriminates against them based on their gender.
Sexism is the product of a class-based economic system that gains and prospers from underpaying, or not paying, stereotyping, belittling and sexualising women. Capitalism needs sexism to survive — to continue to sell its products, and to continue to extract profit from the hard work of ordinary people
Women’s bodies are brazenly sexualised at every turn. Capitalist culture manufactures acceptance of the idea, among both men and women that women’s bodies exist for the pleasure of men.
This is reinforced through the corporate media, commercial advertising, and a flourishing pornography industry. Capitalism commodifies women’s bodies, selling sexist stereotypes of women on the market for profit. “SEX SELLS!” and it has dire consequences.
Research has linked sexist and sexualised depictions of women and girls to sexist attitudes, and gendered violence. About a third of women in Nigeria will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, not to mention South Africa where there’s an alarming rate of rape and violence against women.
Many young people are encouraged to embrace gender roles that objectify women. Sexualisation places enormous pressure on women of all ages to conform to restrictive standards of “beauty” and sexual behaviour. These standards mean that 68% of 15-year-old females are dieting and approximately one in 100 adolescent girls develops anorexia and five in 100 develop bulimia.
By objectifying women, capitalist culture belittles women. It works to limit women’s access to positive gender roles and stifles their development as equal participants in society.
The society we live in is steeped in sexism, even if it takes different forms here in Nigeria to other places on the globe, sexism stems from one global root — the systematic oppression of women.
Anthropological studies suggest that in hunter-gatherer societies, men and women generally lived as equals, sharing everything. Human society existed this way for tens of thousands of years. The development of agriculture meant humans could better control the supply of their own food. They could grow more food than they immediately needed, and the person who had control over this “surplus” also had a power over others that produced less. This was the beginning of private property, and the beginning of a society divided into “classes”, where a small group of powerful people could live off the labour of the rest of society. This is how the oppression of women began. Women began to be valued as property because they were the ones who could produce the next generation of workers.
The role of women changed and they were excluded from economic and political decisions of society. They were now required to raise children, and make sure men had all of their needs met in the home, so that they could be replenished for work again.
This is known as “reproductive labour”, and continues to be mostly performed by women today in the home for no pay. Even outside the home, women make up the vast majority of social and community workers whose wages are low in comparison to other occupations
Even with most women being part of the workforce around the globe, the balance of responsibility for domestic tasks has in fact changed very little, leading to many women taking on a “second shift” when they get home, they tend to the children, while cooking for the family and also making sure they are adequately prepared for work the next day.
I once lived opposite a couple with three sons, and all I ever heard consistently every other day was “Woman! Get back to the kitchen!!!!!!! And I wondered often what the politically correct answer to that meant; I would suggest “knives are kept in the kitchen!!!!!!!”  I was tempted many a time to lend a voice to that frail woman but we all know in Africa women are not allowed a voice in such matters, we are supposed to do mind our business and do as we are told. My question still remains for how long? How long do we endure this prejudice and violence amongst women? Who do we complain to, our mothers? I once heard a story of a woman who caught her husband in bed with her friend, she tearfully went to her parents to seek solace only for her mother to say and I quote “Never leave your husband house for another woman, you don’t want to know how much I have endured in your father’s house, this is my husband’s house, there’s no place for you here, go back to yours before another woman takes your place”.  The sheer degradation of the specie called “Female”. The question here again is, if the shoe was on the other feet what would be the case?This incentive to maintain oppression of women means that women will not be truly liberated until class society is abolished. However, even if those oppressed by capitalism manage to overthrow it, there is no guarantee that the oppression of women (along with other oppressions) will automatically disappear.
Only the oppressed can liberate themselves. Only working-women have a complete interest in ending sexism and women’s oppression. But in order to do this, we need to organize, to educate and actively agitate.
We need to link up with the broader progressive movement, and further the struggle against the capitalist system. We need to draw working class men into the struggle to fight for a new society.
We need to see the stereotype change from “Desperate house wives” to “ Desperate house husbands”. Trends are changing, but not as fast as we want. We need more WO-man president, WO-man CEO’s WO-man COO’s more WO-men in politics, research and survey has shown  and proven women to be better managers, what else do we need to take charge?
Woman! It starts from you! I am taking charge!!