Home
How to outgrow hatred for women in family business
PHOTO/FILE It isn’t easy for professional women to put their jobs or businesses aside to raise up kids. But some young Kenyan mothers are brave enough to take this leap and take care of their children and husbands.
Posted Monday, July 16 2012 at 20:20
In Summary
“Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property.” Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
“Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property.” Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
Napoleon, later to become the Emperor of France, was reportedly one of the greatest soldiers of all time.
As a boy he was awkward, often teased for his thick Corsican accent and relatively diminutive figure, incidents that may have led to his contempt for women evidenced in another instance in which he is quoted as saying “…women are nothing but machines for producing children.”
It is said that what we do not understand we fear and what we fear we hate.
Sadly, though Napoleon’s words may well have reflected the views of society during that period, the sentiments are still with us today.
We see it in our politics; violence meted out on women aspirants and the fact that women in Britain and the US only got to vote on the same terms as men in the 1920s.
The tragedy is not that ancient society harboured misogynistic tendencies — characterised by hatred towards women.
The tragedy is that this demeaning attitude is alive and well in this day and age and, even worse, actively perpetrated in many family businesses by its matriarchs.
Kathathu0129 married into a wealthy family with interests in agriculture, trade and real estate. She deeply loved her husband and was determined to become an integral part of his life, ethnic disparity notwithstanding. The men are all engaged in the family business, each assigned specific responsibilities.
The girls in the family, even though married, are attached to their parents and are frequent guests in the home.
Kathathu0129 has tried everything to please her in- laws; learning their mother tongue, being polite and submissive, giving in to her in-laws’ every demand.
However, 15 years on, she doesn’t feel like a part of the family. Matters came to a head when her father-in-law died leaving his wife in charge.
First were the night meetings.
Every Thursday, without fail, all the sons converge in their mother’s house for a family business meeting. Attendance is mandatory.
The meetings often run into the wee hours of the morning.
RSS