Pain is often associated with disappointments and failures. When pain is left unattended, it gets worse and in almost all situations, unattended pain leaves a more damaging consequence in and on the person it afflicts.
So why do women and our daughters remain silent? Women remain silent in many communities/workplaces/homes because they blame themselves; society makes them responsible; they are given the wrong advice and the voice of shame holds them down by its awful claws.
Life alone is packed with enough experiences (our own and those in our world) to make anyone despair. Silence in many cases is a coping mechanism but at other times it is a tool wielded by society, organisations, and persons to hold down and strip women of everything uniquely particular to them.
Women Blame themselves
Women are often uncompromising, unhelpful, and uncaring in their criticism of themselves. They are often their worst critic and in many cases very unhelpful.
Women have for centuries been made to feel subservient and at the same time responsible for their state in life. It is not therefore unsurprising to see how these beliefs have crept into the subconscious of many women and our daughters. We only see the effects of these beliefs when they rear their ugly heads when women blame themselves for all their pains.
Women blame themselves for:
Allowing certain individuals into their lives.
Giving up their children for adoption.
Taking up only certain careers due to societal and family pressures.
Refusing to take up entrepreneurial opportunities because of external pressure that built a wall against them.
Believing and trusting every physician /doctor who reminded them that they were empty-headed, narrow-minded, and uninformed as mothers in caring for their child(ren).
The times they bowed to threatening and discrimination in the workplace.
Opting to obey their parents/extended family to get married instead of pursuing their dreams to continue in education.
Restricting their world experience and remaining in certain comfort zones instead of traveling to take up new opportunities due to “You are a woman. Are you safe?”.
Taking up what was offered instead of what they were qualified for in the workplace.
Women also go to an extreme and very sad end in many instances.
They blame themselves and heap shame on their heads for:
The rape of their physical persons by close relatives and friends.
The violence they endured at the hands of their husbands and partners.
The decision to attend after-parties where their bosses took advantage of them.
The endless whistle call they get on the street because of the attire they have on.
Their children who in their later years turned to drugs and alcohol.
Childlessness and allowing the pressures from family and their communities push them to the edge of a mental or emotional breakdown.
Allowing the fatigue they experience from having or adopting children.
Accepting to be used as political props within political parties.
The list is endless and in all cases shameful and shocking.
How do we ever accept that the erroneous views that “Women lay the beds they lie on when in many cases they were forced to lay on such beds against their will and consent”.
What are we as a society, community, and nation?
Our Societies and Communities blame women
Women often accept the subtle judgments placed upon their persons and aspirations by the communities they live or engage in.
It is not unusual to hear many say the following about women:
They brought it upon themselves.
Women should know better.
What were you thinking? You are a woman.
Why did you never speak out? What were you afraid of?
Your suffering and pain were your choice and doing.
Don’t women have better and more important things to think about like the wellbeing of their husbands and children?
Now, there is nothing wrong with conversations that seek to clarify the rationale of a particular decision by women, but this is not the case here.
These words are accepted and spoken to remind women and our daughters of what their community considers their “status quo” and that is often the rationale behind such utterances or lines of questioning.
It is no different from telling a woman:
You should know your place. You are a woman.
Do not rock the boat. Let it go. Your voice is non-admissible.
You really do not want to make people go mad.
No one will believe you. Forget the events and live your life.
You are self-centred. You only think about yourself.
There is almost no room for women and our daughters to breathe hope in many of our communities and homes.
Wrong Advice given
The cure many have given as advice is as bad if not worse than the pain women have been made to endure in silence in our communities.
We make the awful mistake and in many cases with malicious intent towards women in saying:
“Look on your inside” when we know the inside of the woman in question is filled with the ugliness of our actions.
“Take a leaf from another person’s story” when we know they have nothing in common with those individuals. We say these issues are a thing of the past because of the number of female CEOs we now have. We continue to live in ignorance. We foolishly compare communities to score points on the back of women and our daughters. How shameful.
“Pull yourself by your bootstraps” when we know they don’t have any shoes to wear. They are silenced in their workplaces by various underbelly threats from their bosses.
“Talk to someone you can trust” when the women in questions experience have been one of lies, deceit, disappointment, and abuse.
“Talk to a professional” when the waiting list for counseling says, “money determines access”. Don’t bother.
What can any woman or daughter do when all she hears from within her and around her is:
Give up, it is no use.
You don’t have a right to speak.
You lost your right to have a voice in this matter.
Your past failures have inscribed a new identity on your person. You need to accept this new reality about your person: “You are a passer-by in life”.
There is such a cacophony of voices that some women think:
It is no use; I really don’t matter.
I give up. The price is too much for me.
My actions will make no difference. It may even make matters worse.
What is the point? The structures are flawed and skewed against me, and I do not see it changing.
Women, Shame and Silence
No woman sets out to have shame become their host and eventual captor in life.
Shame eventually introduces the deceitful company of silence as a way out.
Life, society, culture, pseudo-science, religion, family, government, and own experiences all seemed to have conspired to present a solid case for a woman’s continued silence in our world today.
Women are told to be :
Silent about culture
Silent about religion
Silent about government
Silent about Science
Silent in the home.
There is no field, society, community, workplace, or family unit where a woman’s voice has not been restricted and their decisions to participate and contribute wrestled from them.
They are told and given misguided reasons why every woman and daughter must remain silent, unheard, and a spectator in life.
Conclusion
A woman’s voice is like no other. Her continued silence is the dearth of any society, community, or family unit.
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