Are women, here at home and in our larger home, the West Indies, quietly but definitely taking over?
When did you last attend a function where school choirs performed? Did you not notice how sparse the number of boys? A friend in Barbados, with a shake of the head, tells me how in the schools cadet corps (cadet corps!) the prizes are won by girls. “It’s happening all around. I predict soon a young woman will open the batting for Barbados!”
It is indeed happening all around. I noticed a big change in personnel in a certain business place and asked the manager (still, so far, a man) why the change? His answer was a simple one: he prefers to employ women these days – they are more punctual, report sick less often, keep deadlines, do their work better than men.
Young men are opting out. The fascination of the fast buck has utterly captivated them. Study and the time-consuming endeavour to equip themselves over the long term to enjoy life fully and make a contribution to humanity are a waste of time to them. They want quick results – quick money, quick pleasures, quick possessions, quick power to do what they like. On the other hand, young women are opting in.
They are studying hard, reading more, applying themselves, equipping themselves with skills and knowledge to run businesses, enter the professions, and take over responsibility in every area of public life. Of course, there are young women who live irredeemably superficial lives and young men who hold on to life’s true values – but the general rule is otherwise and it is reflected more and more in today’s Guyanese and West Indian world.
Is this something to do with parental upbringing? Are parents more particular in keeping an eye on their girl children and teaching them values, more inclined to let the boys run wild from early on in this increasingly dangerous world of proliferating bad examples? I don’t know. It requires a full-scale study. As it is, young women are simply outstripping young men in our world today.
The last I saw women comprise over 60 per cent of the graduating classes at the three campuses of the University of the West Indies. In some UWI programmes women outnumber men two to one. Even in the engineering and agricultural programmes, once thought to be male preserves, women make up 50 per cent of graduates. It confirms the feeling that women are readying themselves to take over in the region. That 6 to 4 ratio of women to men graduates may soon become a 7 to 3 ratio.
That sort of evidence means that in a few years women holding the qualifications to run all our affairs better will be in a position to push men aside in all activities and take over. And men have made such a mess of things lately in the region that it would be a good thing if women were indeed given much more of a chance to run things.
It will be interesting to see if this actually happens. Men are going to fight to the death to hold on to top privilege, power and positions they will no longer deserve, but which they will continue to believe belong to them by ancient freehold and age-old right. Even if they lose all along the way, men are going to fall back on their last line of defence – the biological imperative: women, however well qualified, should stay at home and mind the children. It is their destiny by nature’s command.
Women will not accept this but, however hard they argue, inexorably the majority of them will be tugged child-wards.
Women’s convincing ratio of success at school and university level will not convert into the same ratio of actual authority and position later on. Much of the expertise and knowledge which women are accumulating will not be used in long-term careers. Women will not in the end inherit the executive world. Men will continue to rule the roost – they will not deserve it but they will. To my mind this will be a great shame.
There is an old story of a Moghul King who visited a part of his realm where he had never been before and found the people living in dark caves. He was horrified at the gloom and ordered that every family be given lamps and oil to light them. Three years later he came again to find the caves still in darkness; the lamps had been broken and forgotten; the oil had run out. The king, though angry, gave new lamps, more oil, but in another three years when he came back the caves were as dark as ever. This happened three times and at last, in despair, the king asked his vizier for an explanation. “Ah”, said the vizier who was a wise old man, “You gave the lamps to the men; you should have given them to the women.” And the king followed this advice and the caves have been lit, the lamps kept burning, ever since.
Unfortunately for the larger good of us all, men will not give up the lamps of power even though it becomes quite evident that women are better qualified to tend them. And for that reason the caves we live in will be darker then they need to be.
