FEATURE: Of Women, Knowledge & Leadership

When I told my nine-year old daughter Nana Ama the birth pangs I had to endure when delivering her, she burst into a hilarious laughter and told me bluntly that I had nothing to do with her delivery, and that her mother did all the work. When I asked her why then was I her father if I did not deliver her, she explained to me that it was because I paid the hospital bills and other expenses when she was born. While my young daughter may not now know how I became her father, she at least knows, as many do not, that reproduction is the function of females, not of males. Yet the Biblical account of creation describes how Adam reproduced Eve. In that account, God first created man, and out of the rib-bone of man, he made a woman. In the Bible, it is not enough that a wise God will create a male specie first, but that of all the available reproductive organs in humans, God will choose a rib-bone to create a woman! Yet this is the story many believe and quote glibly to support why man must lead and woman follow. The fact that there is majority belief in the preposterous notion that Adam “begat” Eve shows how far down the alley way of ignorance humankind could descend if the issue is about religious faith. Add this to the fact that woman was created as an afterthought, long after God is said to have finished the work of creation and rested after the seventh day, and you have a quintessential case of balderdash presented to us as holy writ.

Yet religious myths themselves could have certain coded truths that are relevant to our time. One such metaphor is the eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Ever since I read the whole Bible at age seventeen and the Koran at age twenty-seven, none of their sacred stories have baffled me more than the idea that God could punish Adam and Eve for seeking to know the difference between good and evil. In these sacred books, we are told that God forbade Adam to eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. At that point in time Eve had not even been created, so we can assume that Adam passed on the edict to her, or that she was altogether oblivious of it. Nevertheless, why a good God will prevent the acquisition of this kind of knowledge should alarm any well-meaning being, since it is the knowledge of good and evil that determines humankind’s role in the world vis a vis that of animals. We can therefore posit that the story is a revisionist version of the original one, since we know God to be supportive of humankind’s quest for knowledge and wisdom.

In any case, through the intervention of the woman, sanity came to the garden of Eden: Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and gave some to Adam. Suddenly, the lives of the first couple turned around: they had epiphany that they were naked, and proceeded to invent clothing to cover up themselves, thus ushering in the genesis of creative thinking and invention.

I take several object lessons from this otherwise bizarre account:

The first is that we were originally intended to be dumb. We were to remain naked like all other animals, completely stupid, lazy and clueless….. Within the paradisiacal life of Eden, man and woman were to live a life of ignorance and reclusive content, remain jobless, eat, sleep, grow fat and die. The idea of life without knowledge is hell enough, but the thought that we would have been cursed with everlasting life of blissful ignorance had we heeded the divine injunction, gives me the fear of my life. However with the timely intervention of woman, humankind was saved the dreadful agony of this useless life. Secondly, woman is the great agent of all knowledge. By defying the nonsensical order of a probable dotard, woman ushered into the world the fountain of knowledge, creating the exciting order of civilization which the life of knowledge brings. If we imagine the sacred myth to be true, then this conclusion ought to be the natural outgrowth of the Eden narrative.

Unfortunately, the woman’s singular act of salvation has been unfairly thwarted to give her a bad name and to subordinate her to man in all cultures. Her quest to open the eyes of man has led to her subordinate status in societies. She is cursed with secondary roles in life, often attached to foolish husbands at whose beck and call she must live. She is expected to remain quiet and obey strange rules about her dress, her movements, her relations with others, her biological cycles and her rights to give or deny sex. She has an iron ceiling imposed on how far she can go in education, career advancement, property ownership and business transactions. Women, although repositories of knowledge, have been excluded from leadership roles and decision-making, to the extent that their potential talents have been squelched and their knowledge wasted. These exclusionist acts, done in the name of religion, culture or tradition, constitute a crucifixion of half of humankind’s hope for a positive transformation of the world as we know it. Insofar as they carry humans in themselves for nine months, birth us, bathe us, feed us, teach us, train us and love us, women must take precedence over men because their functions are naturally of greater importance to the survival of the human race. What we know of good and bad, how we put words together to make sentences, our feeling of worth- they all originate with our mothers. In our teenage years, most of our actions are geared towards pleasing some female lover somewhere. In adulthood, our lives achieve fulfillment by the involvement of a woman. Without women, there is no training, no knowledge, no comfort and no love. In short, in the absence of women, there is none of the spices of life for which the human life becomes worthwhile. Why then must she be subordinated to man? Because men rewrote the sacred books, and turned the natural order upside down.

Gradually, women will be restored in their former roles as custodians of knowledge and leaders of societies. Liberia has taken the lead in Africa by electing a woman President. In Europe and Asia, women are now being given the mantle of national leadership. Hopefully, the United States will soon have a woman President. In Ghana, the appointment of a woman Chief Justice is valuable in its symbolism (Justice is a Woman) and in its adumbration of the restoration of the woman to her rightful role of a leader. What is conspicuously missing is a woman candidate to ascend the presidency of Ghana…… Despite these advances, gender inequality remains rife in Ghana in particular and in the world at large. Even though they constitute the majority, women are fewer as heads of schools , businesses, corporations and political groupings. Like pyramids, their leadership roles narrow at the top. For this reason, the feminist cause, which aims to subvert gendered attitudes and perceptions, and to promote the advancement of women in all spheres of national life, ought to be fully supported by all right-thinking men and seen as the matrix of enlightenment for our generation.

The mess in the world today is the product of the rebel passions of men, and it might take the philosophical reflections of women, their compassion, relative honesty and pacific orientation to bring peace and harmony to Earth. After all, if Eve had not eaten of the fruit of knowledge and brought some to Adam, we would still be prancing around naked with no ability to differentiate between what is good and evil. In short, we would be like the other animals. If those sacred accounts have anything to do with the origins of knowledge as we know it today, then we owe our womenfolk the greatest of loyalty, love and respect, and a sacred vow to do everything possible to restore them in positions of power in all spheres of influence.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo is a certified English Educator in the State of Texas. He can be reached at sarfoadjei@yahoo.com .

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.