Violence against women; When will it end? - Vicky Wireko asks
Some eight days on, I am still numb over the alleged gruesome murder of a wife by her husband who then secretly went ahead to bury her. A husband looking in the face of a woman he calls his wife and killing her in cold blood is beyond pardon.
Advertisement
That is my assessment of the case of the man who was in the news last week as sending his wife to get him cigarettes and on her return, murdered her and sought the help of two of his friends to bury her in the bush.
Heinous crime
Only the man knows what drove him to act the way he did. But whatever the motive, no woman deserves to go through such heinous crime especially at the hands of a man who once professed love for her.
Though violence against women happens in properly contracted marriages, unfortunately, many more of the violence happens in relationships where the man has not had the courtesy to perform even the simplest of traditional marriage rites.
The fact must be made clear that for a woman to move house to live with a man who prefers to call her his wife yet refuses to go through any formal marriage processes, including the traditional presentation of drinks to the woman’s family, is a sad move that young women should never get themselves entangled in. The reality of such cases is that the man is simply shirking his responsibilities.
Pastor’s admonition
And that reminds me of a pastor’s admonition to a congregation with a sizeable number of young people when he officiated the marriage ceremony of a young couple last Sunday. To start with, he reminded the congregation that in our tradition, a marriage is a union between two families and so the families on both sides of a marriage should be in the know when two people decide to stay together.
While commending the young couple who were being joined together as husband and wife, the pastor’s encouragement to the unmarried young ones in the congregation was not to just continue to live with their partners without any formal marriage ceremonies. He said the Church was always ready to bless well-meaning relationships and so they should avail themselves of that opportunity.
Formalised relationships
I do agree with the pastor because there are inherent dangers in a relationship which the man refuses to formalise by going to see the woman’s family for the necessary rites to be performed. Who does one contact should anything happen in the marriage? Yet, some women go through such relationships and bear, sometimes, three or more children with the man and still regard him as a husband. Where is the legal backing in the relationship?
The pride of a woman who decides to move bag and baggage to live with a man should be on the premise that the man has shown her respect by seeing her family to formally seek her hand in marriage. For a man who means well, he would want to see both families supporting the union. An Akan proverb says that it is for a reason that when one eats banana, the peel is left. It is for a good reason that traditionally, a man seeking the hand of a woman for marriage should first of all perform some rites for the woman’s family.
The process of traditional rites bonds the two families and naturally provides “guarantors” who provide support to the marriage. For the woman, this should even be a safe cushion that the man would at least look back with respect to these family elders should anything happen.
Physical harm against women perpetrated by their husbands does happen for many flimsy reasons. Some women have been disfigured in relationships because the men they lived with poured acid on them. Some have been hospitalised and some driven beyond insanity by men who are only boyfriends in reality. But why?
Societal pressures
The fact is that we live in a society that does not favour women who are single at a certain age. Society raises eyebrows at a woman who, beyond a certain age, does not have children of her own. So the odds are that for the woman who does not want society’s ridicule, even if she feels capable of taking care of herself, she is under pressure to be seen with a man who probably may be a monster.
Until society’s attitude to unmarried or childless women changes, women will continue to be at the mercy of bullying partners who will throw every punch at the least provocation simply because they have no respect for women.