About Being a Woman

“How many husbands do you have?” an older gentleman asked me a few nights ago at a dinner party. Stunned by his lack of interest in my educational background or my connection to the host or anything else for that matter, I looked at him with the look of disbelief.  In that moment, he measured me as a human being by the number of men in life. As a younger woman, there must be men in my life who no longer serve as paternal guides but serve as a source of strength in light of my ailing place in society: an unemployed educated Black woman.  I shifted my weight to my right foot to accommodate for the distance the comment made between him and me. I responded sternly, “None.”  Even as the conversation continued, I could hear the questions ringing in my head, “How many husbands do you have? How many husbands do you have?”

A question like this one should not be surprising for me as a young African woman (second-generation African-American) living in the U.S. South; however, the question shook me.  The discussion started as praise for to my academic accomplishments and shifted quickly to my joblessness and steered even more quickly to my source of ‘help’.  In his opinion, I needed the help of first, my husband(s) or second, my parents.  I did not understand what a husband had to do with my career; furthermore, I did not understand why a husband had to come up in the conversation at all. Since I returned home from school, I experienced a heighten awareness of my identity: the feeling of being a woman- Black American, Southern, and African. This piece largely stems from my need to find my new place in society outside of being a student. Without the backing of my former job and school, nothing seems to assure my credibility. Forced to confront my gender as an outlet for discrimination more intensely, this work stems from my frustration with both gender socialization and gender inequality.

Not that I have not seen myself as a woman before this time, but this awareness of my place as a woman strikes a negative feeling of becoming an outsider of my own society (or rather a society from which I wanted to benefit).  Privileged to see beyond my gender (or rather blinded by my determination to be the best regardless of my gender), it surprised me, again, to find out that I will be  ignored or looked over because I am a woman. More and more, I find myself in situations where I am placed at a disadvantage as a woman or forced to feel “out of my element” in conversations with men.  The few people in whom I engage in serious conversation are women.  Often silenced or ignored as a woman, I find myself searching for a way in or a way to prove my intelligence while my male counterparts, and often less than counterparts, rise above or overshadow my abilities and accomplishments. These men have more opportunities, better jobs, and overall, more respect than I have, not because they work harder or are more intelligent, but because they have the special magic of being a man.

Growing up in a house of women, I learned to feel independent (I do not know how to describe my feeling of being outside of labels and working beyond the way others limited my capabilities. Whatever I wanted to do, I’d do it).  My single mother, who experienced discrimination because of her status as an immigrant, learned and taught my sister and me to work our way outside of society’s corner for Black and immigrant women. My mother moved to the United States from Zambia in 1979 to finish high school. Although she joined her brother’s family in Mississippi, she still faced all the stages of discrimination against immigrant people including initial hesitation to her existence, exclusion from cultural rituals that define the hospitality of the South, inclusion in events only to become questioned or invisible as a human, and finally complete avoidance unless otherwise close relationship was intentionally built. These practices heighten because of her status as a woman, which included disregard for her intelligence and often confidence in her inability to function in society. As she learned to work through these challenges, she found ways to help my sister and me find peace in our identity while she still struggled with her own identity as a foreigner in a foreign land.    Our family actively practiced pushing against the social grain because we, as Black immigrant women, existed; and we, as Black immigrant women, deserved respect.  I worked to be the best because I could be the best, and it paid off in the end. I graduated valedictorian of my high school class and summa cum laude from both undergraduate and graduate universities. I visited over ten countries and experienced diverse cultures and communities. I learned better than men and often challenged them in conversation or debate because of my confidence in my argument. As I am home with no grades to earn and few arguments to make, I get lost in the idea of my role in society and the reasons I am avoided as a possible candidate for further development.

HBO’s 2007 series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency character Mma. Grace Makutsi personified my frustration.  Alexander McCall originally created the character in her popular book series of the same title. Despite Makutsi’s 97% score on her exit exam from the Botswana Secretarial College, she only finds a job working for a new business, which cannot afford to give her pay or the proper equipment to become successful. Few people take her seriously and when they do not, she announces her high score and high intellectual ability.  Although a funny character, Mma. Makutsi represents the woman whose dreams and abilities are overshadowed by her place in society as a woman of a lower class.

So much of Mma. Makutsi’s story resonates with my own feelings.  However, my constant struggle to find place in this society stems from how environment helps prepare me and other women like Mma. Makutsi for this inequality.  What I call gender socialization is how women are conditioned to function as lesser members of society.  As Southerners, Americans, and Africans, society teaches women to be respectable through silence, “sweetness”, and domesticity, all the while being intellectual and beautiful yet accessible. Any woman who challenges these characteristics are seen as threats to the social order.  Although our post-modern society recognizes gender inequalities, it continues to pay women less than men and discriminates against women inside and outside the workplace.  Womanly are continually sexually and physically attacked on college campus while their attackers continually escape prosecution.  Single mothers, especially those of African descent, still face discrimination in media and society as lazy, unfit for some work, and enable to care for their families. Men feel entitled to harass women in the workplace but most often in social settings such sidewalks, shopping malls, parties, religious services and political fundraising events where men may or may not know the woman they are assaulting.  Unwritten rules of chivalry give men permission to protect women while furthering the gap between men and women’s rights in the United States. Women overwhelming carry the burden of child-rearing in the ‘traditional’ nuclear family and in other relationships/families whereas men can choose not to participate in childhood development at any point. Women’s sexual lives become public consumption allowing society to comment on their sexual practices and bodies while every other aspect of their being is excluded.  Transgender women often serve as a place of spectacle and are most likely hindered from participating in social settings as their full self. Decades after Alice M. Rossi published her work Naming Children in Middle-Class Families, maternal deprivation and father absence are de facto terms used to indirectly note the family dynamic or lack thereof a ‘nuclear family’.  Discrimination against women continues to dominate how men and women interact and force women into a confined space with limited access to power, social and economic equality, and respect.   Women learn quickly to keep their legs and mouths closed while still allowing room for men to enter in and dominate a woman’s movement.

The gender socialization of African-American women focuses on escaping negative stereotypes of the loud-talking, over-sexualized, lazy yet hardworking, docile, emasculating, and domineering women. African-American women must live in a space of being the anecdote and representing the sample of negative stereotypes placed upon them.  In her text Sister Citizen, Melissa Harris-Perry explores how women view themselves as citizen through the lens of harmful stereotypes. Harris-Perry talks about how women react to being “racialized and gendered in a way that produces shame, fear, and distress.” Harris-Perry explains the kinds of values accepted by the white sphere including domesticity, magical wisdom, and cleaningliness offered only by the means that African-American women do not possess the same things. These crooked images, Harris-Perry states, force African-American women to tilt in the direction of society to fit into these ideals. For example, the community uniquely works to uplift intelligence while encouraging young girls to be at the mercy of young boys.  During my short-lived career as an educator (six years), many instructors asked elementary aged girls not to volunteer to read or solve problems so that the boys could “catch up.” By sixth and seventh grade, girls talk less in class, and instructors depend on the reaction of young men to carry the classroom often looking for their interest in the lesson, asking them to lead discussion, etc. Based on identity characteristics, society shames African-American women to stay behind, be silent, uplift and carry burden of the culture behind the man.

For the African community in the U.S., the role of the woman as leader and servant fluctuates, depending on the need or occasion. African women living in the U.S. gain more status in the African community yet struggle to negotiate between traditional roles and their current status.  Furthermore, women who not fit the model of the perfect leader and servant (i.e. single mothers and those of a lower class) are silenced and forced into solitude even in African spaces.  In his text African Women Immigrants in the United States: Crossing Transnational Borders, John Arthur explores how African women function as “active and independent players” in their transcontinental migration.  These women do possess a greater sense of agency through migration yet still must navigate through systems of oppression particularly ones brought by African men and reinforced by American culture.  Arthur fails to fully analyze how African women negotiate through a transcontinental patriarchy which becomes a stronger creolization of its former selves.  African women work through these boundaries, which Arthur celebrates. Yet, we ignore the creolized patriarchy and fail to explore how women move within their communities in the United States with this added burden.   Our environment conditions women to safely function in patriarchal society. We teach girls and women to be sweet and smart, but not overpowering. We strive to protect them from harsh treatment by fulfilling role of silence and servitude.

So which comes first: gender socialization or gender inequality? Do systems of oppression determine social behavior or do our behaviors/cultures create space for systems of oppression? The Fact: People create and recreate culture; thus, through the conversation of restriction and resistance, rules form that govern how we should behave to keep the constructed social order.  Of course gender inequality breeds gender socialization, which perpetuates a cycle that keeps women at bay. Through the restriction of gender inequality, gender socialization forms as a sort of resistance to cope with gender inequality.  It is much like slanting ourselves in the crooked room so images appear straight.  However helpful gender socialization may feel when “dealing with” patriarchy, conditioning young girls and women to readjust themselves for the benefit of male domination hinders them from becoming full citizens and even greater, hinders them from acknowledging and challenging microaggressions and macroaggressions.

Being home has forced me to position myself in the scope of being: 1. socially condition as a Southern, Black American, African woman, 2. fighting against oppressive systems and 3. still facing discrimination as a Southern, Black American, African woman on a daily basis. Through gender inequality and gender socialization, I quickly learned that my place as a woman is more apparent than I realized. I firmly depended on our post-modern society to give some sense of progress and fluidity in my complex identity. However, the struggle for equality in social and workplace settings continues. As women, we stand on the shoulders of women before us such as Betty X, Coretta Scott King, family members, professors, and use their strength and courage to find new ways to discuss how we prepare girls and young women to fight inequality.  Hopefully, as we continue to push our way to dismantle racist and patriarchal systems, future Black women will be recognized for their talents and abilities.

As a woman, especially a Black woman, especially an African woman living in the United States, who is out of school and out of work, I live in a constant state of shaming, a constant state of finding my way through social roadblocks, a constant state of dismantling stereotypes. I awakened in a crooked room that I have had the tools to identify but have never seen before or maybe I am finally sitting up straight in this crooked world.