Affirmative action: Open letter to my sisters in the NPP
I am almost certain that some of you will be outraged by what I’m putting down on paper today; but I will say my piece, regardless.
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Please help the New Patriotic Party (NPP) help themselves. Let’s nip this November ‘flower’ in the bud before it brings the party to its knees.
I do not believe in affirmative action. I never have.
Let’s face it sisters: when God created the world, justice, equity, equality and fairness, it seems to me, were not part of the formula. Why else would the great majority of his creatures suffocate under the intolerable, combined weight of hunger, poverty and sheer abject misery, while a few ‘lucky’ ones roll in enough dough to feed themselves and their families for generations to come.
Moreover, when he drove Adam and Eve out of Eden, the curse he laid upon the woman was “I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee“ (Gen.3:16 K.J.V). The seed for the political and social domination of man over woman, to my mind, was sown right there and then.
Missing values
However, as the world proceeds on its slow but inexorable march towards self–destruction, we have come to realise that it is up to us humans to take the world we were given, and insert some of these missing values in order to arrive at a more balanced equation, so that if there is destruction at the end of the journey, we can all go towards it hand-in-hand as more or less equal partners. Smart calculation.
But the way to achieve that balance, I humbly submit, is not to go snivelling and grovelling before men and begging them to please, please, please give us a leg up the ladder that leads to the lofty realms they inhabit. They won’t do it. It is not in their interest.
I was a member of a working group constituted by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in 2013 to make proposals for inclusion in the Affirmative Action Bill. The first day of the meeting, participants were called upon to make preliminary remarks about the assignment we had been called upon to perform. Sitting next to me was a fellow of the IEA who was supposed to be the moderator for the meeting that day. When his turn came, I heard him mutter to my hearing: What do you women want? After all, you have the power in the bedroom. What else do you want? (I am paraphrasing). My jaw was on the floor. I knew that very day that this particular battle was definitely not the Lord’s. Subsequently, another man who had also been invited to the meeting opined that if the bill were allowed to pass, women would take away jobs that should rightfully go to men.
So you see, it is not about education. It is the society we live in. Mentalities are just not ready. This is why even though I tried to kick against it, I was persuaded by the rest of the group to accept that the only way to make our ‘requests’ palatable to men was to drown them in a soup bubbling with children and the disabled.
This, sisters, is a battle that we women will have to fight on our own, with weapons fashioned by our own brains. Let us start by training our young girls; building their capacities, and instilling in them a desire for public service; a desire to contribute to the progress of their country that does not limit itself to attending to the needs of men, nurturing their ambitions and bringing up children.
Role models
Let us continue by raising high-achieving women and hold them as shining examples worthy of emulation by our young girls and other women; and while we are at it, let us lend our full support, morale, as well as financial, if possible, to those women who actually dare to jump into the political arena to show men what a few deft, feminine moves can achieve.
So please go out there and fight the men “boot for boot” as we say at election time. If you are elected, you would have been elected because you are competent. If you are elected, you would have been elected because you are eloquent; because you are selfless and caring; or even (why not?) because you are rich. Then you would have been elected for exactly the same reasons as the men.
But if you allow yourselves to be bamboozled into getting elected for any other reasons, and especially because you are women; you are finished. You will be confined to a ghetto; you’ll be looked down upon; you‘ll be looked down upon; you’ll be patronised; you’ll be made to feel every day of your parliamentary life that you are just not as good as the men. In the end, you will start doubting your own capabilities and wondering if this was the right way to get into Parliament.
Tony Blair managed to get quite a few women into the British Parliament with his Women’s Short List, and what were they called? “Blair’s Babes”. Please don’t let them do this to you.
Yours in the service of the sisterhood of women,
Dedo Difie Agyarko Kusi
Accra