GENDER BASED VIOLENCE AND STEREOTYPE

I was discussing with a man in my place of work sometimes ago on how some women could be so hardworking and intelligent in every area. He agrees with me totally and to buttress his point to actually make me feel that he respect women a lot, he mentioned the case of a couple who was in the same department as staff. The wife was so hardworking and was publishing several papers which when it became obvious that the husband was not writing any paper she had to be including his name in her papers as co- author. When it dawn on the management that the wife might become a professor before the husband, they had to step her down for the husband to become a professor first. I was so furious with this story and I asked the man if they were fair to the woman but he answered me immediately that they knew it was not fair but they were actually helping the woman by their action because they wouldn’t want her to loose her home in the course of being a professor. Can you imagine that kind of rubbish? This is the kind of society we are that people are being deprived of what they have worked very hard for simply because of their gender.
Women should not be part of village meeting when they are taking decisions but they should remain at home to cooking for their husbands and children. A girl should not buy a car even when she needed it so badly and could afford it so that she would be able to get a suitor because no man will want to marry a girl who is mobile when he is not.
In a debate about a couple who met in their place of work, fell in love and got married but later discover that one of them had to leave the company because the company would not to employ a couple. Who should leave the company and be jobless the man or the woman? Majority even including some women felt that it is the wife that should quit just for the single reason that, the husband is the head of the home and so must be the one to retain his job and so if the woman wants to keep her home, she has to be the one to quit her job.
Despite the resolution that women should be given 35% of the share of leadership of their country and the vibrant involvement of women in the politics of Nigeria, We have never produce a woman governor out of the 36 states in the country talk less of moving near becoming the president of the country. Out of the 109 seat we have in the senate of Nigeria, women occupy only 9 seats.
The problem of stereotype in African countries needed to be addressed seriously if we want to get anywhere in solving Gender based Violence.