Imagine this: a farmer wearing a pair of rubber boots and dirty overalls climbs into a tractor. The engine starts and the farmer drives away to fetch her kids from school.
So how many of you had to make major adjustments to your mental picture when you found out that the farmer is, in fact,
a woman?
To tell the truth, I do it all the time, too — make assumptions about the sex of people in certain professions, that is. Vets, doctors, professors, captains — there’s just no getting away from the sorry fact that my automatic assumption is that they’re men.
There’s a good reason for it, of course. After all, the vast majority of the professionals I listed are men. But the danger is that our assumptions around gender serve to consolidate the status of women as mere minions in this man’s world.
There’s a horrific side to this power imbalance that, somehow, our society just has to get to grips with: sexual harassment and violence. An even scarier side to this is that in the very institutions meant to be nurturing future citizens who are committed to a just and democratic society — our schools — sexual abuse is rife.
The fact of principals and teachers sexually abusing their learners is no urban legend; it has been established as fact through different research projects and surveys. One by the Medical Research Council in 1998 found that ‘37,7% of rape victims interviewed mentioned that the perpetrator was a school teacher or principal”.
And how’s this for a mind-blowing quote from a learner: ‘I’m worried that I’ll get Aids. My teacher refuses to wear a condom.”
It’s a massive challenge to protect our youngsters from this, as well as to teach them how to protect themselves. You can’t turn to easy-to-remember lines like, ‘Don’t talk to strangers” — it’s another sad fact that most people who suffer sexual harassment or rape know and trust the perpetrator.
The only silver lining I can see to this glowering cloud hanging over all of us is that the facts are clear and on the table, and the facts are widely regarded as reason to push for urgent change. Momentum is gathering nationally around projects like the Department of Education’s Girls Education Movement (Gem), an Africa-wide initiative aimed at protecting and promoting the rights of the girl-child, with particular emphasis on education.
If the launch of Gem in KwaZulu-Natal recently was anything to go by, the days of abusive educators are numbered. One of the many eloquent, self-assured young girls who addressed the gathering said that ‘Educators who abuse girls need to be severely dealt with. Their names should be published because they are animals.” Bravo, sister! What an inspiring mix of grit and practicality — no hint at all of victimhood in that young woman’s world.
As with all change, we can expect the destructive, disempowering treatment of women to shift very gradually. But shift it must. A report in a local Gauteng paper in July brings home yet again the brutal tragedy of gender power abuse: three Grade 3 boys allegedly indecently assaulted a 10-year-old girl classmate during breaktime.
That boys as young as this even consider such actions confirms again that men and women alike have a lot of soul-searching to do. All of us have to grapple with our socialisation — no easy task, but completely crucial if widespread gender perceptions are actually going to be challenged. As I say, change will inevitably be slow; but we have to start somewhere.
I invite all of you to join me and to start right now.