Men Share Tasks With Women

Changing Traditional Responsibilities of Men and Women
By James Achanyi-Fontem
President, FECABPA
A man being busy in the farm without the partner does not mean she is lazy and is not doing her work. While the man continues the work in the farm, the woman could be marketing harvested crops. Generally during harvest, food accumulates in bags at homes and some have to be sold to create space, especially when maize and bean crops have the same harvest cycle. Some crop is stored for use by the family and the extra yield is taken to the market by the woman to sell in town, where the prices are slightly higher than in the village.
By sharing responsibilities does not necessarily mean giving women much attention, as some people may think. This can be explained by the fact that a good woman will usually use the money she brings home from the market to pay school fees or to take the children to the health centre or hospital when they are ill. She also buys things needed on the farm and sometimes she even gives her mother-in-law some extra money to buy sugar for her husband’s tea.
Generally when a woman thinks of the family first, she does not need to be told how she uses the money she earns through her sweat. Women are forgetting the old ways already. Very often nowadays, women join women's groups, run their own businesses and take money to the bank.
The traditions are changing, not only for women, but for men too. The men who are family heads used to have many cattle which they took care of each day. They would wake up very early each morning and return later in the day. At night they would protect the household from thieves and wild animals.
The lives of men today are different from those of their fathers'. Young persons don't even live in the village any longer; instead they go far away to work in the cities. There is rural exodus, and they do not return home to visit or send money to their parents as in the past. Some leave their wives and children remain in the village without protection. This is all the more reason for women to work hard on the farm.
In Cameroon, women are working hard on the farms and taking care of the children and old people. Apart from the fields and the animals cared for, they go to market where they work and earn money from selling their extra crops. When the women return home from the market, they must gather firewood and water, wash clothes, and prepare the evening meal. This is too much work for any woman.
Some men, on the other hand in the Central Africa Region, just stay at home doing nothing and waiting for the woman, on the pretext that she has not told him that she needs help on the farm. This is behaviour needs to be changed and we need to encourage sharing of responsibilities between the men and the women. For more contact: James Achanyi-Fontem, P.O. Box 1460 Douala, Littoral Region, Cameroon Tel: 00237 77758840 Email:camlink2001@yahoo.com Return to http://cameroonlink.blogspot.com
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