Education is a term which describes the process by means of which we come to realise our capacity for human action – that is to say, the capacity which makes it possible for us to act in a manner which appropriately distinguishes us from other objects or beings. It is within this context that John Stuart Mill said, in 1867: “Women who read, much more women who write, are in the existing constitution of things a contradiction and a disturbing element.” We might say the same thing about women who succeed in higher education: they are a contradiction and a disturbing element. How can we ensure that women who enter higher education, and succeed in it, are regarded as a normal part of society?
Two things must happen: Men must change their attitudes towards women, and women must change their attitudes towards themselves. Reading from John Stuart Mill’s essay, written in 1867 on The Subjection of Women: “All women are brought up from their earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women and all the current sentimentalities that is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. And by their affections are meant the only ones they are allowed to have those to the men with whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute an additional and indefensible tie between them and men.” Living for others may be a noble act of selfless generosity, but when it governs an entire sex, it is a disabling propensity. When Freud was asked what it is that the normal person should be expected to do, he replied: “to love and to work.” Women have traditionally been expected to love, but not necessarily to work, if work meant an interference with love. The modern woman who does both usually experiences a psychic split between these two functions; between her desire to love others, especially those closest to her, and her need to work; to be recognised as a person in the real world. Traditional conceptions of these two spheres, love and work, have regarded love as a female principle and work as a male activity. More and more women are calling for a fusion between love and work. They wish to alter the workplace to make it a more loving place, and they wish to alter the perception of themselves as more than loving beings, as also belonging in the socially and educationally useful sphere of work. A healthy fusion between work and love, these two great human capacities, will result in power, not in the traditional sense of this word when it is used as a form of authority and ascendance, but power as energy emerging from the individual’s source of inner renewal that generates outward and returns to the individual. Traditionally, there has been a cultural imbalance between work and love, with women achieving authority (power) only in the domestic or personal realm of the realm of love, while men attend to the work of the world. This imbalances result in the distortion of the individual’s energies, with women indulging in self-pity, manipulation and sometimes mental disorders, and men indulging in corporate profits, aggression and self-destructive behaviour.
It would be naïve to believe that it is simply the fact of male domination that keeps women from doing significant work; the domination by men over women is the result of patriarchy and women’s consent. Ursula King (1989:22) said: The word is primarily understood to refer to a male power and property structure in which men are dominant to the detriment of women and, one may add, also largely to the detriment of their own full development. Women are complicit in their own domination because they are conditioned from birth to accept their minor role in society. We must ask ourselves in what ways are they also complicit as mothers, as fathers, as sisters, as brothers, as friends, in educating our daughters and sisters to be fit only for love and not for work?
Famous Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who did so much to free human beings from their political bondage, had this to say about women: “The children’s health depends in the first place on the mother, and the early education of man is also in a woman’s hands: his morals, his passions, his tastes, his pleasures, his happiness itself depends on her. A woman’s education must, therefore, be planned in relation to man. To be pleasing in his sight, to win his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to counsel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties of women for all time, and this what she should be taught while she is young. The further we depart from this principle, the further we shall be from our goal, and all our precepts will fail to secure her happiness or our own.” We are all aware that women as mothers produce daughters and mothering capacities, and the desire to mother. These capacities and need are built into and grow out of the mother-daughter relationship itself. By contrast, women as mothers and men as not mothers produce sons whose nurturant capacities and needs have been systematically curtailed and repressed. This prepares men for their less affective later family role, and for primary participation in the impersonal extra-familial world of work and public life.
The famous psychologist, Adler, assuming that the reality of a woman existed in the purely relational terms, had this to say: “If we are to help a girl, we must find the way to reconcile her to her feminine role. Girls must be educated for motherhood, and educated in such a way that they like the prospect of being a mother, consider it a creative activity, and are not disappointed by their role when they face it in later life.”
In sum, how many are there in Namibia at the present time, young women who have all the potential to become great intellectuals, great musicians, great artists, great writers, and whose genius will never see the light of day? And what will we do to ensure that all these women will reach their potential? I would love to quote and leave you with the words of Nelson Mandela (1994) who said: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves ‘who am I to be brilliant, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You playing small doesn’t serve the world. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just some of us, it’s in everyone. As we’re liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Reverend Jan A Scholtz is the former chairperson of the //Kharas Regional Council and former !Nami#nus constituency regional councillor. He is a holder of a Diploma in Theology, B-Theo (SA), a Diploma in Youth Work and Development from the University of Zambia (UNZA), Diploma in Education III (KOK), and BA (HED) from UNISA