Boko rubbishes gender policy
Baboki Kayawe | Tuesday July 28, 2015 17:06
Worst still, he decried that the gender context in Botswana was such that women were reduced to objects whose being and existence were heavily under patriarchal rule.
While blaming socialisation, the human rights lawyer did not spare his own profession from accentuating the local gender climate. He argued the law perpetuated the status quo as a number of legislations equated womenfolk to men whom society has condemned as not adequate.
Discussing the National Policy on Gender and Development that was moved on Friday by the Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Edwin Batshu, Boko charged that this biological and normative approach that assigned duties and roles has suppressed women, intersex and transgender people.
Under the Matrimonial Causes Act for instance, he argued women were the only party entitled to alimony yet an insane man was the next eligible person under this piece of law.
“What the law is saying is that an insane man is equivalent to a woman,” Boko said.
“Now we come up with a policy on gender when women are still equated to insane men, and it is the law that says that,” he said.
Further, the law of seduction (tshenyo) trained women to internalise their oppression, as the father is normally the litigant, not the daughter. “Seduction means leading a woman astray from the path of virtue. It is never the man who is seduced,” he said.
He blamed the social construct of femaleness and maleness for assigning roles as those who behaved contrary to societal norms were forced to make up for their shortcomings. “Society is guilty equally in classifying people as male and female. One of the socially assigned characteristics of masculinity is aggression for instance, and when males feel inadequate they medicate themselves with drugs and alcohol,” he said. “We have a society that has put a flawed norm.”
He added that 80 percent of men suffered from empathy deficient disorder which was attributable to this social construct of gender. “Because men are disqualified from expressing their feelings, they can’t even cry because it’s unmanly, we have bred men who are engaged in domestic violence and passion killings,” he said. Moreover, he condemned the policy for excluding inter-sex and transgender populations.
Advocating for these minority groups who, according to the biological definition of gender found themselves not belonging and without any identity meant that the policy deprived them of their human rights.
When presenting the policy, Batshu said that it replaces the Women in Development Policy and will enhance equal participation of women and men in a transformative development process.
“It is a culmination of a number of initiatives in the nation’s progress towards the realisation of an ideal in which equality, justice, and dignity for all citizens are guaranteed and protected”.
However, to Boko, the policy has failed to acknowledge the complexities of gender or even include the traditionally suppressed constituents. “It has failed to seize the moment to advance us as a society to better understand and address the challenges that would free many of our people so they can attain greatness,” he said.
He added it felt short of acknowledging the existence of other people.