Yesterday’s African Women’s Leadership Network (AWLN) Liberia forum on Positive Masculinity bore the objective of “Changing Minds, Changing Attitudes towards Women’s Leadership.” The event, held at the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Ministerial Complex, featured Her Excellency Madam Sirleaf, the former Liberian President, as AWLN’s Patron, and other high-level leaders from government and civil society.
The speakers shared insights on the positive and lucrative impacts of women’s participation in all aspects of society. Their interventions ranged from the cute to the concrete, reflecting men’s multifaceted impact on the fight for women’s empowerment. General Services Agency Director General Josiah Joekai described the culture of “mommy appreciation” he is fostering in his home. He says he is teaching his young boys to show affection for their mother with hugs and kisses before school each morning, and to make thoughtful gestures to her, even in her absence. “I make them draw her pictures at school, and bring them home,” he smiled with pride. He also has them order something for Mom when he takes them out for lunch.” Mrs. Joekai is paying it forward, he adds, by preparing her sons to treat their future wives in the same way.
T. Nelson Williams discussed his nonprofit organization, Servants of All Prayer Assembly (SOAP), which works to address violence against women and other societal ills. He also described real and powerful cases from his extensive career, where he has seen women compete and excel in the corporate setting. These cases corroborated the statistics that Gender Minister Gbemie Horace Kollie shared about the proven high return on female leadership in the corporate setting.
The Minefield of Merit
The various statements from dignitaries and panelists were encouraging if not new. But they left me wondering what happens when women fail or fall afoul of male measures of merit?
Veteran journalist Maureen Sieh missed the morning session featuring Madam Sirleaf due to conflicting engagements. But she put the case of the former president’s track record to the last afternoon panel on “Men as Allies: How to Actively Support Gender Equality.” Many men, and some women, she said, have vowed that “no woman will again accede to the presidency of Liberia,” citing the real and perceived failures of Africa’s first female president. “How do we combat those double standards?” Sieh asked.
Panelists deftly sidestepped the question, some denying having heard such statements. They could not, however, dismiss the double standards in a patriarchal narrative that seeks to justify women’s exclusion. Women are assumed to be less competent than their male counterparts, more emotional, too easily controlled and manipulated to lead, and, therefore, less worthy of equal opportunity and equal compensation to men.
On the basis of such tropes, even a simple (perceived) misstep in a woman’s flourishing career can spell doom for her professional survival – and for that of other women. Such stringent barriers to inclusion and promotion have reduced many ambitious women, at least in Liberia, to begging on their knees, literally and figuratively, for opportunities they merit without question.
Not so for men. Rife corruption, licentious conduct in and outside of professional settings, and incompetence have yielded the rotten fruit of our 178-year-old, male-dominated governance framework. But society often dismisses these as a series of individual failures, almost coincidental in nature.
Meanwhile, women exhibiting the same competitive spirit as men in the political and professional spheres get a “petty” badge stuck to their chests. As one male participant said, during a question-and-answer session, “The women don’t support each other.” But Panelist Lisa Tenneh Diasay, President of the Female Journalists Association of Liberia (FeJAL), was ready for him. “I don’t know what statistics you have to prove that,” she said. “But men also don’t support men. [Voters’] choices are ideological. People pick the candidate they believe in.”
The rehashed stereotypes notwithstanding, Madam Sirleaf made clear that women are “demanding full participation in all aspects of life… and [they] can compete equally [and] win.” Then, waxing psychological, she quipped, “How do we now get into your [men’s] brains and tell you that you’ve got to just see everybody as equal?”
Cultivating Coherence
Changing minds and attitudes is, after all, a psychological exercise. The patriarchal narratives that oppress women reflect a cognitive dissonance that is not merely borne of innocent ignorance, easily combatted with shining examples of feminine strength and ability.
That dissonance is often a deliberate and deadly case of weaponized incompetence. Women’s tears and pain are dismissed as infantile weakness, whining, and pretense. Something to be tolerated, patronized, and ignored – never analyzed, understood, validated, and addressed. As one male panelist smiled, “You have to listen to women. Really listen, even though sometimes it’s hard because they can be too emotional…”
By contrast, COVID-19 lockdown statistics showed a crisis brewing in nearly every home. Nine in ten women globally experienced or witnessed incidences of domestic violence during that period, as their men used women and girls as targets for their misdirected rage.
The uneven scales measuring men’s and women’s emotions weigh male violence lightly. Many men consider it a strength and an important deterrent to domestic disorder, rather than a lack of self-control and inability to command respect. Many have not been taught any better.
As Mr. Charles Lawrence of the UN Population Fund Liberia (UNFPA) put it, “You don’t give keys to someone to drive a car without training them on how to operate the car.” He was a panelist during the session on “Redefining Strength, Masculinity and Power,” making the case for sex education in schools. Not only would it teach young people about bodily autonomy and marital rape, he said, but it would help “to train them in how to handle relationships.”
Lawrence, furthermore, decried the culture of control, which he claims contributes to Liberia’s high maternal mortality rate. “About 745 in 10,000 [women suffer] prenatal deaths, [because they need] permission and support from men to access prenatal care and contraceptives,” he said. He stressed the need “to ensure that [women] have independent access to care.”
With these realities in view, Liberia’s religious, educational, and family systems—the founts of norm formation—came into focus.
Speaking on the panel with Lawrence, Dr. Samuel Reeves, Senior Pastor of Providence Baptist Church, expressed concern that the gross misinterpretation of scripture is fostering women’s oppression. He decried what he called “untrained [spiritual] leaders” who mislead their followers to such detrimental effect. Dr. Reeves quoted Ephesians 5:22-25, which calls women to submit to their husbands and husbands to love their wives. “The words Love and submit have the same root word,” he said, adding that Jesus Christ calls his male followers to be express sacrificial love for their wives.
When pressed on the Bible’s stipulations on gender roles, especially in terms of “the woman of noble character” described in Proverbs 31, Reeves acknowledged women’s due role as independent and significant economic actors. “But how many men would accept their wives making more money than they do?” he asked rhetorically.
There were apparently no other clerics of any faith in attendance to respond to Reeves’ remarks. Some participants, feeling that panelists and speakers were preaching to an urban and Christian-centric choir, expressed disappointment at this and hoped that future forums of this nature would attract a more diverse array of panelists and participants, including clerics, traditional leaders, and rural dwellers. This, they said, would enrich the discussion and grant more people exposure to the insights that can trigger a shift in mindset and behavior – especially in traditional settings.
Regenerating Generations
Fortunately for some of my favorite panelists, they had left the event before I could corner them and ask some tough, perhaps intrusive, follow-up questions.
Early on, as Joekai shared his efforts to teach his sons chivalry, I leaned over to Mrs. Ethel Toles, a longtime aide to Madam Sirleaf, who was sitting to my right. “God forbid some girl breaks their poor little hearts, one day,” I whispered wryly. We chuckled, but I was serious. I wanted the Director General to share the other side of things. What is he teaching his school-age sons about constructive disagreement with himself and other males, with their mother and other women and girls? How is he teaching them to handle all manner of disappointments – especially withdrawn consent in any scenario? Do his lessons consistently account for the deep flaws inherent in men and women’s humanity? Does he paint the opposite sex as deserving of dignity and love only in the context of their moral standing? “When they go low,” where will his sons go? How is he teaching them to set boundaries with grace and firmness?
It wanted the same explanations from T. Nelson Williams, also called away early on professional duty. How does he conceptualize and handle women’s failure, especially in the professional setting? With the smooth, elegant air I have so often observed in him, I am certain he has more to share. Deeper teachings and guided practice for men and women on how to have difficult conversations constructively could usher in a significant shift in male-female relations in every sphere. It would shift male and female concepts of how to win, use, and sustain power. Bloodlessly.
Sitting on the Mat
Sitting as we were in the front of the ballroom, to the right, Mrs. Toles and I should not have been chatting while Mr. Williams discussed women’s value in the corporate world. But we were. And what she said lit a bulb.
“Have you noticed the women in Muslim countries? They are leading? Plenty of them.” She had accompanied Madam Sirleaf to AWLN’s annual Intergenerational Retreat in Harare, Zimbabwe, over the weekend, and was impressed by what she saw. Muslimas, Hijabis, from across Africa, holding senior positions in the governments, and speaking with power and vision.
“Why do you think that is?” she asked, looking at me intently as if she knew I already had a thesis. I did not, but my mind was racing. “They know their culture,” I said, finally. “They’re deeply rooted in it, so they know how to maneuver and achieve what they want.” She nodded, considering what was surely an oversimplified reading of a context I am wholly unfamiliar with.
On a roll, I continued, “We, in Liberia, aren’t as deeply rooted in our culture. And those who shout the loudest in the women’s movement are urbanized. They do not speak the language of those who need to hear the message the most.” Of language, I was speaking literally and figuratively. Mrs. Toles nodded some more, seeming satisfied with what at least was the start of a broader conversation… and perhaps some research for the newly minted Data Hub at Madam Sirleaf’s Presidential Center.
The forum closed with participants writing on sticky notes what most impacted them, as well as their recommendations and personal commitments to promote women’s empowerment. I wrote that I appreciated the opportunity to have a co-educational discussion. I recommended more diverse participation in future forums and committed to creating opportunities for women to amplify their voices to promote gender equality. I am, after all, a journalist. Sometimes.
I am also a lover of language and relish its power to build linkages otherwise unfeasible. As the women’s movement advances, our sustainable success in achieving equality will depend on our willingness to sit on old mats to plait new ones. To learn old languages and, with them, weave new tapestries of culture for the collective good.
Lilian L. Best is a journalist, political economist, and corporate strategist with nearly twenty years of experience serving the Liberian Government in diplomacy and economic development. She writes at the intersection
of geopolitics, economic development policy, gender, and culture.
