In the Claws of Women’s Movement: The Plight of Maid-Servants

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema Ph. D.; Post-Grad. Dipl.

In dark corners of affluent homes in Ghana
Maid-servants toil daily
Female house-helps are abused
Female apprentices are exploited
Cleaning after elitist rich women
The suns on equality hills in Ghana
Elitist, well-educated, powerful women
Owners of Mrs. Drs. Women’s Movements
31 December Women’s Movement (DWM)
The Women’s Coalition
ABANTU for development (Ghana)
National Council on Women and Development (NCWD)
International Federation of Women Lawyers FIDA (Ghana)
And all other parrots of equal rights
The peacocks of gender rights
In our mud of elitist opportunism
Are the very oppressors of less fortunate females
From backwater impoverished enclaves

In brightly-lit hubs of the affluent homes
Pampered affluent children
Of Mrs. Drs. Women’s Movements
Happily sit idle
Plotting the lengths of their finger nails
Plying their cacophonic traffic on cell phones
Preening their lips with chic lip sticks
Playing gods on profaned computers

In brighter corners of Conference Halls
Mrs. Drs. Women’s Movements
Present papers on gender equality
The oppression of women by men
The lack of equal opportunity for females
They pontificate about female rights
About human rights as gender rights

But in their affluent homes
Mrs. Drs. Women’s Movements
Subjugate toiling maid-servants
Abuse house-helps with chlorined fingers
Exploit apprentices with needled fingers
Regularly whip maid-servants into fragility
Maid-servants raped by males of the house
And cocooned in interminable marginality
By the very parrots of equal rights
The peacocks of gender rights
Oh the owners of Mrs. Drs. Women’s Movements

**Akadu N. Mensema is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained
oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a
college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have
called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com