"Men sit on buckets and stare at whatsoever passes by. The usual bypasser is a woman sauntering slowly down the road with bundles upon bundles balanced on her head. These women are pillars of wonder, defying gravity while wearing the ho-hum aspect of a perfect tedium. They can sit, stand, talk, shake a stick at a drunk man, reach around their backs to fetch forth a baby to nurse, all without dropping their piled-high bundles upon bundles. They are like ballet dancers entirely unaware they are on stage. I cannot take my eyes from them." -Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
As you can tell by the huge grins on their faces, these women were aware they are on stage. We ran into them right before they were about to hike up a mountain. And some men here think women can't do anything….
That is one of the exasperating parts for me about this country: Gender inequality. Being a woman here is very different from being a man. You are treated completely different if you are a woman AND a foreigner with paler skin (An interesting combination. I'll save the comments about racism for another day). Being here in Mozambique makes me realize how spoiled I am. I am an American born in the late 1900's. I didn't have to fight for my right to work with equal pay or for my right to vote in elections.It's not like that in every country.
Many Mozambicans are farmers. A husband and wife will go out to their farm and work all day. When I see couples walking back home in the evening, it is usually the woman who is carrying all the food (on her head of course!) with a baby strapped to her back. Once they are home, the husband rests while the wife cooks dinner (Because, of course, a man can't cook! That's a woman's job!).
This gender role is ingrained into the rural society here in Mozambique, which is where I live. It is not as extreme in the cities but still exists. It's the young girls who clean, cook, and take care of the babies. They have all these duties to do in the morning so if/when they came to school many times they are late and tired. In the evenings, they have the same chores. It's hard for them to find time to do their homework, especially if there is no electricity, so most of the time boys are better students. This, then, makes the girls feel like they aren't smart enough to learn and they fall further and further behind.
"While the little boys ran around pretending to shoot each other and fall dead in the road, it appeared that little girls were running the country." -Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
This little girl is Jane. Her family lives in an empty classroom at our school and the baby on her back is her little brother. I always see her wandering the halls like this when I am teaching.
We can see examples of the government attempting to empower girls in our school. Female students are constantly encouraged to participate in class and in extracurricular activities outside the classroom but the numbers don't lie. In Mariri, ten percent of our students were girls. Now in Meconta, we have closer to half. Peace Corps also has two country-wide programs to help girls. One, JUNTOS, is a group with both girls and boys were gender is addressed and the other, REDES, is a group for girls only.
Women here in Mozambique are making a stand. I now live in Meconta and the Administrator (Governor) of the entire district is a woman! At least one of the female teachers can drive a car and there has been a woman (Luisa Diogo) Prime Minister of the entire country. This country is still developing but it is moving forward. Pouco a pouco :)
