The crowing of hens

After a decade of living with our new Constitution, most South Africans are well aware of the strong stand it takes against unfair treatment because of one’s sex or sexual orientation.

Similarly, most South Africans are only too well aware of the abuse and violence that women continue to suffer. The question remains whether the people who will lead our country into the future — today’s adolescents — can bring our constitutional values to life.

A recent study carried out in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, sheds some light on this question.

Participating in the study were 130 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 from different races and classes. In some ways, there has clearly been a shift in thinking from the traditional, rigid, gendered division of labour, with 100% of the adolescents indicating that they accept the economic empowerment of women. While there was a perception that men dominate in the public sphere and women in the domestic sphere, there was also a recognition that this needs to change.

But this recognition was significantly qualified by other responses. All of these adolescents agreed that the position of the nation’s president should never be a woman! In a similar vein, most respondents stereotyped the jobs such as carpenter, welder, motor mechanic and pilot as being ideally suited for men and not women.

When it came to domestic power relations, many male respondents indicated that while ‘both men and women should have a say in the house, men should have more say” and that they will not allow their wives to undermine them.

Vestiges of patriarchical perceptions were also expressed in the view that women are more suitable for the rearing of young children than men, and men are more suitable than women for the tasks of protecting the house, repairing the car and disciplining children.

There were significant disagreements between the sexes on certain issues. Most girls rejected the notion ‘that women must strive to look pretty and young as possible”, while boys expressed the view that ‘it was important for women to wear jewellery and make-up” and ‘ look pretty and young”.

But this, said the boys, is not important for men. As one girl remarked indignantly about this double standard: ‘Men are seen as sexy when they are grey and wrinkled while women are seen as ugly when they are wrinkled and grey — this is unfair.”

Another double standard was the view that promiscuity is more undesirable for women than men.

With regard to sex and marriage, both boys and girls concurred that sex should always be negotiated and that ‘real men don’t rape”. There was also agreement that both men and women should enjoy an equal right to initiate sex, courtship and marriage.

One particularly disturbing result, though was the unanimous view that homosexual relations are undesirable and regrettable, and that homosexuals and lesbians are not ideal parents, having forfeited their right to parenthood because of their sexual orientation.

Ultimately, the study highlighted once again that simply educating our youth about gender issues and non-sexist ideals is never going to change things when our broader society continues to maintain its sexist status quo.

But there is hope as we continue on our road of transition. I draw inspiration from the African writer Sylvia Tamale, who writes in her book When Hens Begin to Crow, that ‘the chant of crowing hens will one day reverberate around the four corners of Africa”. I would qualify this, though, by saying that the synchronous chant of crowing hens and crowing roosters — crowing for a common cause — will one day reverberate around the four corners of Africa and, indeed, the world.

Adhis Chetty is a secondary-school teacher in KwaZulu-Natal. Her research was part of her higher degree in education through the University of KwaZulu-Natal

Steps to challenge sexist perceptions at schools

These ideas could form part of an intervention programme at schools to change gendered perceptions or degendering sexist perceptions: