Africa-Press – Uganda. In the early years of education, only boys were allowed to attend school.
The male gender was considered to be superior whereas the female gender was supposed to remain at home to take care of the young ones and doing domestic chores because they were considered inferior.
Society never saw any need to invest in women aside from preparing them for marriage using a home as their informal school that nurtured them to become better wives and mothers.
From generation to generation, that narrative started changing and gradually, the girl-child was allowed to go to school because society had started recognising them as people of influence too. When they reached school, it was equivalent to entering unlevelled playing field.
The boys had more confidence than the girls because the male gender had been in the game for long. Second, the teachers and instructors then were mainly male due to the fact that they were the first beneficiaries of formal education. This too contributed to the female gender accepting the unfair award of second place in the game.
While at school, the major introductory or core subjects were reading, writing and arithmetic. They were compulsory for both girls and boys. Then other subjects like physics, chemistry, biology that could lead to grooming professionals were mainly taught to the male gender as they were being prepared to take up certain roles.
Whereas boys were being prepared to become doctors, engineers, innovators, lawyers, accountants, and sea captains, the purpose of educating the girls was still not clear.
This observation made the female gender assume that science or logical subjects were not designed for them. Second, since the teachers or academic instructors were mainly male, they strongly believed that all hard subjects were designed for the male students that also acted as a blanket to the female gender.
With time, the female gender gained confidence and started competing with the male gender in schools, thus demanding for the same benefits as the male gender. The good news is, society appreciated the move introducing the female gender to positions of influence through merit not like the male gender that had earlier received a number of privileges for being born a boy.
Women did not just demand for equality in education and neither did they get anything served to them on a silver plate. They worked so hard to earn their seats and respect which eventually led to a change in the narrative that certain positions were designed for the male whereas others were designed for the female.
This generational mentality has found its way to the current generation where many female students believe mathematics and science subjects are meant for boys whereas English and arts subjects are meant for the girls. The fact that most of the science subjects from primary to high school are being taught by male teachers speaks volumes.
Today, many girls and women have refused to drown in that generational narrative hence they have turned tables in education by performing extremely well in science subjects thus acting as the light at the end of the tunnel to many young girls that have picked the button stick from them.
This has encouraged society, mainly parents to invest in girl-child simply because many are observing it practically that what a man can do, a woman can do it better. That is why today, we have female civil engineers, pilots, doctors, and managers in positions of influence.
Peter Okware, [email protected]
