“Woman, like a man’’ is not a compliment
it is sexism.
This piece has been on my mind for a long time. Similar events kept piling up and the one I read recently finally did it. While going through the pages of a book, the status of women in Islam, the writer dissected the problem of women's intelligence being rejected as a norm but seen as an aberration, a masculine attribute in a woman, which warrants the figurative masculinization of women perceived to be intelligent and/or successful.
On a saintly woman, Rabia Basri, a cleric remarked: A woman on the path of God becomes a man. A statement based on the erratic belief that excellence is the rule in men and the exception in women.
I used to be an ardent listener of a popular Nigerian radio program, the presenter always lauded the women who assisted in the success of his organization; “Woman, like a man’’.
A man plainly said on Twitter, regarding a woman on a reality show, ‘she has the brain of a man’. A display of unwillingness to accept that intelligence is NOT gender-based.
An acquaintance once presented at a meeting. It was spectacular. A man stood up, saying: ‘her presentation was good even though she’s female with an expectedly small brain’. An inference that being female is to be intellectually incapable.
And so on…
This regressive notion might have originated in times or places where women were generally denied access to learning and intellectual spaces. And even then, women still thrived against all odds.
To stick to that notion in this age of modernity where ubiquitous access to learning and information has brought to light the -across all spheres- capabilities of women is simply barbaric.
