The new millennium woman

 

 

Don’t you just find her an easy object of your envy and admiration? Yet much of what she is, is the result of the times – times she has done very little to concoct. 

 

This notwithstanding, however, many who look and judge her do it like she is entirely the product of her will; like she chose to be that way.

 

Of course, I am not trying to create a victim caricature of the new millennium woman, but if men knew, they would not [still] look at, relate with and treat women of today with the same expectations and demands as their [the men’s] progenitors did the woman of yesteryears. 

 

Back in the day, the man was the sole provider for the family. Even where his women went out to the garden and tilled the land, growing matooke (central Uganda), millet (eastern, parts of northern and western Uganda), maize and sweet potatoes (eastern Uganda) and other food and cash crops, she went as a kind of extension of the man who, when the harvest came, acted like he owned everything, apportioning what was reaped among the women.

 

The rest he sold as and when he wanted. Then, it was the man’s duty thereafter to buy clothes for his women, besides feeding them. Then, the man’s word was final, because he was a kind of fountain of provision and identity for the whole family. 

 

Then, the man didn’t think he really needed to do more than provide material things; I doubt many men then knew concepts like romance, affection, conversation, etc. 

 

Conversation, yes, at the drinking place and during the sharing of game meat, but not in the household. So what is causing misery among many young men marrying the new millennium woman? It is what my Accounts teacher, Godfrey Magala (RIP), called ‘balance carried forward’.

 

Young men marrying this woman, who is a conglomeration of modern forces, many of them beyond her control, and wanting to be to her the kind of husband her great grandmother had. 

 

It is this man coming into the marriage with tales of male supremacy and how the woman is an acquisition of the man, and wanting to carry on from where his forebears stopped. 

 

It is this man finding, contrary to these myths that the woman he’s married was fed on new stuff by fellow women who were not there in the times talked about, and who care less. Women whose lives are focused not on keeping their place in a marital home, but fitting in with the lot at the office, the club and the broader family circle. 

 

Women whose concerns stretch beyond competing for the attentions of the man of the house, but also maintaining a certain body shape, where her forebears didn’t care, even if they looked like a clothed anthill. 

 

They are also concerned about trending fashions, happening cars and alluring holiday resorts. They are concerned about the elusive promotion. This woman, even if she should be among the remaining few who dream of marriage, let alone a good marriage, is not entirely cut out for meeting the man’s needs and demands. 

 

This woman is out to find a man who will help her live the life, even as she tries to help him live his, the best way she can… a kind of symbiotic helpmate situation. 

 

Unfortunately, the guy comes in wearing virtual monarchic garb; while the babe glides onto the stage donning a princess’ gown, a ballerina’s shoes and the entire globe’s ‘contacts’ over her eyes.

 

He comes in to be served; she comes in to be loved. He comes in to demand; she comes in to give and take. He comes in with poise; she enters with caution… Something must give, I daresay.