As Pride Magazine Nigeria launches the #FromtheShadows campaign to encourage women to rise to their full potentials and not fade into the background, I thought it apt, as the Editor of the magazine and as a woman, to take a minute or two away from punctuations and spellings to give my two cents.
Emerging from the shadows entails having a seat at the table to make demands, offer solutions, make decisions, and be completely and intricately involved in the making of a better society.
It begins by challenging and calling out the status quo that undermines the creativity and ability of women. The recent wave of women – and men – challenging the blight of sexual and physical assault on women is essential. Equally as essential is challenging the daily infringements of a woman’s right to be human – to have an opinion, give an opinion and act on that opinion. Women, it means challenging every wrong assertion, move, utterance and action that negates the dignity of the female person every moment of every day from our husbands, our fathers, our partners, our brothers, our friends, even mere strangers when talking, laughing, eating, crying, basically as we breathe. We need to challenge the mundane and the seemingly trivial that tend to continue to denigrate the female gender, because it does add up and it does matter.
Women, it also means challenging and calling out ourselves, and being critical of ourselves. Men alone have not created the world we live in. Women have had a hand in this – minimal yes, but there is a trace of an imprint. Everyone then, not just men, needs to do better.
I sincerely believe that if the quotidian en masse is not challenged, the seismic shift required is just not going to happen.
Liberation is necessary, but it also comes with responsibility. After the shadows, then what? As women find their voices, emerge from the shadows and have their seat at the table, will the world be an infinitely better place to live in?
Permit me to compare the current push for further women liberation to the post-colonial struggles of African countries in the previous century. Decades after independence, these countries are still grappling with national identity, good governance and human rights. To put it plainly, most people on the continent struggle to live with the basic human dignity which should be accorded to a living person.
From the collective consciousness of the marginalised and discriminated there is a blinding view of freedom! But as we as women demand basic human dignity, there should also be a thoughtful meditation of what it would be like to have a voice and to have power.
Is this a harsh demand? I am still young and naïve, but from the little I have experienced, at the end of the day, we are fundamentally human, with desires and ambitions that may hurt others. We also need to consider other fault lines of difference – socio-economic class, religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, sexuality, even differences on what it is means to be a woman, the list is possibly infinite – which can impede a better world order.
“Another world is not only possible; she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” – Arundhati Roy. And for that, I am truly thankful. Seats bear our names, and till we are comfortably seated, there will be no retreat, no surrender.
Adaudo Anyiam-Osigwe is Editor of Pride Magazine Nigeria