Although Shiku has a mind of her own, she has opened a can of worms with this thread which is insensitive to the cultural clusters that bind African societies. She should have limited her treatise to specific issues and categories of men. Even African women will oppose many of her sweeping statements no matter how liberal they are.
Societies grow: meaning culture and every living matter in it. The vitriol she pours against Kenyan men for not contributing to domestic chores is unnecessary. There are very few
Kenyan men in Stockholm who DON’T assist at home. Surprisingly enough, those of us who have visited a number of the older generation of Kenyan men, can testify that they would comfortably cook even when their Kenyan wives were at home. I can name some of them but for the respect of their privacy shall not.
I have personally seen male Kenyan friends from the current group dashing into their bedrooms to change diapers or bottle-feed their children at the beckon of their wives who could be busy doing other things. Granted, there are bitter relations which have led to dramatic divorces and other forms of domestic violence in Kenya-Stockholm, yet they’ve never been anything near the so-called ‘honor-killing’ communities from the Middle-East.
It seems that Shiku is not aware of the violence among Swedish spouses despite the peaceful façade. She therefore assumes (in my interpretation) that Swedish men are all lovey dovey and change diapers at the command of their women. Those who read tabloids like Aftonbladet and Expressen get shocked at the profound psychological abuse some of the Swedish women undergo in the hands of their men, and vice versa.
Why do some Swedish men opt to marry African or Asian women? Because they are comparatively humble and still possess certain female values which Swedish women threw out of the window like they cast their bras in the 1970s in the name of liberation. I might sound simplistic but gender issues in Sweden have advanced beyond looking at African men as oppressors because they don’t share domestic chores.
Cases abound of Kenyan women who have applied crude forms of gender equality through the lenses of the Western world only to retreat in order to retain their families. A Kenyan male living in Sweden does not have to shed off everything Kenyan. A relationship is about agreeing on given norms without stripping the man bare of his dignity.
After being routinely pushed into the kitchen by my Swedish girlfriend to cook, I thought it was normal to do so when I visited some close relatives in Nairobi recently. They are well-off and quite liberal, but believe me, when I entered into the kitchen to assist them in cooking, I was asked whether I had changed roles and had forgotten that a man has no place there. Luckily I am pitch-dark so did not blush though got very embarrassed.
There are contextual male-female roles in our society so when the likes of Shiku suggest swapping them, then something is really wrong. My relatives kept wondering why I wanted to do my laundry and even begged for other chores. In the long run, they advised me to be frequenting Kenya otherwise I shall forget what a true African man is. The woman of the house has a well-paying job yet still comes back home to cook for the family despite having two house helps. This analogy shows that even better placed families still prefer African roles without Western manipulation in the name of liberation.
Luseno
About the Author
Oh my gosh! That picture explains it all; Shiku’s demand for men to share household chores. A sink full of dirty dishes and a kid strapped on the African man’s back.
I prefer my man (and he is a Kenyan) outside the kitchen because he has no culinary skills apart from doing nyama choma.
He knows that the kitchen is mine unless I specifically invite him to help in cooking which is a rarity. I don’t want a puppy for a man whom I have to lord over because we live in Sweden. My man brings more money at home so I compensate by doing more household chores than him and am happy. Different strokes for different spouses but I remain traditional because unnecessary impositions just add up to the already stressful life in Sweden.
Thanks for this retort Luseno. I have no problem with Shiku’s wish for African men to partake of household chores. However, she needed to have cast her net beyond this shallow narrative because most of the developed countries still remain conservatively patriarchal. It’s ridiculous to preach about sharing domestic duties using the example of Sweden, which is unique in this area.
I guess her emotional roller coaster never made her investigate the situation in Japan, the world’s second richest economy where most women are still very traditional, yet highly educated, have jobs and enjoy Western influences.
Ask any Swedish men married to Japanese women and they will tell you divorce is out of the question, unlike if they had made the God-forbidden mistake of marrying Swedish women. Contrary to the meek facial expression the Japanese women portray, they are dominant at home and manage the household finances. Their role as mere housewives is changing with early entry into the labor market and late ‘retirement’ into being housewives. They uphold their families with honor and treat their husbands and sons as their brothers; not disrespectfully, but in an orderly manner. They value families. This example is meant to emphasize the shifting gender roles in advanced economies, which up to late 20th century had more men working than women.
In 1974 Sweden passed a law allowing men to take paid paternity leave to stay with their children. Many have utilized this at a certain time, yet women still dominate in childcare. Two years ago some Swedish women who were interviewed said they did not mind spending more time with their kids and were not bothered if their male partners didn’t take the leave.
Let us picture Kenya where most male urban slum dwellers do heavy menial work that cannot be physically handled by women, and therefore leave very early and return late, thus the women are obliged to take care of all the household chores.
In the rural areas too despite gradual modernity and education, domestic duties like fetching water and firewood still remain a preserve of women and girls. Traditionally, men were hunters roaming out for long hours to fetch food. Today they still remain traders or petty farmers looking for money to sustain their families.
Many nomadic communities still have clear male and female roles. Shiku should have been sympathetic and used their examples to show how they are neglected politically or how the biased disbursement of public funds for community development affects them. There are more structural inequalities that make women suffer more in Kenya and such would be more interesting to debate rather than stoking fires among “African” in Stockholm men as she daftly labeled them.
Boo to Shiku for this. African men are not an entity to be generalized; they come in all shades.
Here’s another twist in gender parity from Shiku’s Western world quoted verbatim:
Anna Anka caused a hullabaloo by suggesting that being a housewife might be a worthy goal for Swedish women. As for Swedish men, Anna advised them to stop whining about their feelings and whip out their wallets: they “do not hesitate to insult a woman by allowing her to search for money while he is calculating his part of the bill. American men know how to woo a woman. They are very romantic and buy expensive gifts.”.
An astonishing number of American women with advanced degrees have elected to drop their careers to stay home, bake cookies, join book clubs and let hubbie bring home the bacon. They do not see “Honey, did you pick up my dry cleaning” as the equivalent of domestic abuse.
Careers did not make these women as happy as they expected. They discovered the working world is what men have always considered it to be: a necessary routine, a duty, an unfulfilling bore. Swedish men who figured this out quite enjoy slacking on paternity leave—preferably during the summer months or the world cup in soccer.
http://www.thelocal.se/22634/20091013/
Shiku needs further research on this interesting yet volatile topic. Here’s another scientific report titled: “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” from the USA, which exemplifies “gender equality”.
“The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being
is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries.
Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.”
http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Paradox%20of%20declining%20female%20happiness.pdf