IAC’s Regional Workshop Ends in Addis Abba
Friday 7th December 2007

(Continuation)

 3. Disinheritance

It is the norm among some ethnic groups for a man’s relative (male and female) to inherit his property. Even if he had made a will, this is set aside and the property shared out among his own siblings. Some families with a conscience may see that provision is made from the man’s estate to cater for his children, but in many instances, the widow and her children are chased from the house once the man’s burial rites are over.

Only the other week, the widow of a distant relative told me that the eldest brother of her late husband, came last year, not only to send her packing out of the house that she and her husband and nine children had lived in for many years, he also banished her from their town. She and her husband had been born and raised in that town. She couldn’t even return to her own extended family house and live with her relatives, but had to go rent a small apartment in a neighbouring town. Her people couldn’t go confront her brother-in-law about their sister being banned from their hometown. Such is the power that some in-laws, particularly in the rural areas, can wield with impunity in our society to suppress women. Some women are afraid to take their in-laws to court because that may lead to their children being ostracized and disowned by their husbands’ families. Family ties are strong in Africa and no woman would want her kids rejected by her husband’s family, so, women in such a position, accept their disinheritance quietly and then find ways offending for themselves and their children.

However, some enlightened women are bold enough to insist on their inheritance by seeking redress in the court of law. In some families, female children are not given landed property from their parents unless the parents allot it to them while still alive. Even then, the male siblings can take their sisters to court over that, after the demise of their parents, quoting the tradition of their ethnic group, which forbids a woman being given property in the family. Similarly, a woman is not allowed to announce the death of a parent or spearhead the burial ceremonies, even where she’s the eldest in the family. This is the role of the oldest male child, even if he’s the youngest in the family. If there’s no male child, a close male relation of the deceased plays that role.

4. EARLY MARRIAGE

In pursuance of the need to see that girls do not embrace a promiscuous sex life, in some cultures, young girls under the age of ten are given out in marriage and such girls are raised by their husbands. They’re exposed, of course, to early sex and early pregnancy and childbirth, which we know, can lead to the development of the dreaded VVF, where a woman leaks uncontrollably from the vagina.

This repulsive health problem which is now being well managed in some designated hospitals, thanks to the awareness the media has created about it, has led to many wives being divorced by their husbands, and their being ostracized by the society, particularly among the poor and unenlightened in the rural areas, where they are unaware that it can be managed. Such women become beggars and some die from the gross shame and unhappiness which the condition brings them.

One could go on and on about the harmful traditional practices meted out to women, but this paper is about the role of the media in the campaign to eliminate them. The role of the media is mainly that of creating an awareness, and of advocacy. The media, on its own doesn’t have the power to directly eliminate these harmful practices concerning women.

But with its ears and eyes open to happenings in the land, it would be aware of these practices and the danger they pose to women and their welfare, and then go on to highlight them m such ways that there would be a great awareness of them by citizens.

This can be done through powerful write-ups that would grip the attention of the people and the government; participating in workshops concerning all aspects of women’s health and welfare, and reporting on these workshops, and making recommendations. In Nigeria we have several media associations. There’s the Media Women Association, the National Association of Women Journalists, Media Rights Agenda, etc. These societies form pressure groups which lobby the government and the law-makers, acquainting them with facts about these obnoxious traditional practices against women, and the life-damaging effects they have on women, and encouraging them to enact and enforce laws which can eliminate them. Creating an awareness and lobbying those in power to pass the relevant bills concerning women, can never bring the much desired elimination of these practices, because cultural and traditional practices have so hard a grip on our lives that a number of people, both male and female, don’t want to let go of these harmful practices. They believe there would be fatal consequences on the family and clan if a girl is not circumcized, or a woman doesn’t mourn the husband as dictated by the ethnic group, etc. For example, a married university graduate from the South-South of Nigeria, during her first pregnancy, prevailed on her husband to take her to their village so that she could be circumcized. She had been born in the city and had not been circumcised. She was in her mid-twenties. The husband, a health journalist who knew the danger of the FGM did his best to dissuade her from wanting to be circumcised, but she said she was told that she could die at childbirth if she wasn’t circumcised. He still wouldn’t agree, but she began to accuse him of wanting her dead so he could, perhaps, marry a younger and prettier woman. He was alarmed to hear that and he contacted the families. His wife’s family was right behind her, so, in the end, he had to bow to her wish and he took her down to their village for circumcision. Luckily, there was no adverse effect on her. They now have three children, and she still believes that being circumcised made her have a safe labour and delivery.

(To be continued)