"My wife belongs to the kitchen", is not just a gaffe. It's terribly who we are, By Kainene CJN

It turned out last week in Germany that our President who had insisted to us that he belongs to nobody knows exactly where all women belonged. The President while replying to questions from the press about an interview granted by his wife remarked (or rather, joked. In case you are Garba Shehu) that his wife belonged to the Kitchen, the living room and the other room. 


I don't know while our President prefers Germany for the release of his choicest gaffes. It may have something to do with standing so close to Angela Merkel, one of the most powerful women in Europe, and suddenly realizes that this place is not the other room. Walahi!

Anyway, as is usual with the release of any of the Presidential blunders, daggers were drawn. Themes were designed. TV producers worked gleefully on this latest release. Opposition politicians took it up. "APC is anti women" they all screamed. The Presidential spinners went to work. "The President was only joking". "Can't you take a laugh"? They queried. Thank God, Lai has not been asked to weigh in. He could tell us the President never travelled to Germany. 

But taking advantage of the President's  remark to gain any political goodwill is for me to be overly opportunistic. More worrisome, is that these themes and hypocritical condemnations waters down an important reflection this faux pas should call us to. The President did not misspeak. He wasn't joking either. And that remark wasn't a gaffe. It's terribly who we are as a people. It's how we see women as a society.

We see this remark in the market place, the beer joints, in our boardrooms and in our churches.

We see this remark when that Onitsha trader boasts to his peers, "edewere m graduate n' ulo". (I kept a graduate at home).

We see this remark when a pastor prescribes the primary criteria for choosing a soulmate to be any woman who can cook and pray for more than one hour. Never mind qualities like honesty and loyalty. It's criteria like these that reduce marriage to a prosaic partnership of the one, who can cook and the other, who can provide money for food. 

We see this remark when Papa Ngozi insists on taking another wife because her wife 'gave' him seven children - all girls.

We see this same remark when we chide Ada for not knowing how to cook oha soup although she is just 14 years. But we ve no problem that Obiora who is 18, cannot even boil hot water.

We see this remark when we denigrate a female politician as being ambitious.

We see this remark when we believe that every single lady taking care of her bills has a sugar daddy.

I can go on and on. It's just who we are. PMB only said it to the foreign media.

But I think we do ourselves a disservice with this remark. I know this because I come from a long line of strong women whose influence extended beyond the kitchen. I have seen the amazing contribution they can make. I have a grandmother whose entrepreneurial abilities rivals that of Dangote. I have a mother who had to resign from teaching to do all manner of business in order to raise six graduates - three of which are foreign trained. I have an aunt who is a Rev. Sister and a medical doctor and whose kindness is totally irreplaceable in my life.  I know of the feminine endurance and stamina because I have a younger sister who everyday, braced the snows of Indiana to achieve her dream of being an accountant. I know this because I have a cousin who is a statistician, a nurse and an official in the US Navy. She achieved all this by the way, before her 25th year birthday. So, I really do have an idea of what we lose whenever we insist that more than a half of our population should remain in the kitchen.

We cannot change this belief immediately. But we can start small. We start today by telling Chinelo that she could be a pilot; that being a dancer doesn't necessarily mean she's slutty; that she could go to an interview, confident that she could be selected not because of her complexion but because of her ability. Yes, we can start by telling Ebuka that though, he wants to be an engineer, he also  should visit the kitchen more often; that he can learn how to change diapers; that his gender doesn't excuse him when he can't tidy up his room. And yes! We can teach Ebuka to drop that sense of entitlement a notch because odiro iche chaa chaa (he is not special at all).

You see we can do all these. But first, we need to stop turning this remark into a joke. We need to stop the funny themes and politics. We need to do a reflection on the we assign to women.

Here's to all the women I have loved and been loved by, the women who believe they can make a small difference.

Cheers!