Berkley Center

Last week, on March 8, it was International Women's Day. In Cameroon, it's an enormous holiday with about two months of lead-up and preparation. There's a special fabric that dressmakers use to make special dresses that everyone wears on Women's Day, with phrases on it such as "solidaires toujours, solitaires jamais" (which means “never alone, always in solidarity”). The big culmination of the holiday is a parade of certain women's groups and other organizations, including tontines, or rotating credit associations, microfinance organizations, the U.S. Embassy, and many others. I was lucky enough to be able to parade with the microfinance organization called MUFFA, specifically designed for women in situations of urban poverty to start businesses and gain independence from their husbands.

The parade was insanely hectic for the first block, but we had our lines, our steps, and our waves all coordinated by the next block. There was music playing, people cheering, and when I looked to my right, I saw CHANTAL BIYA HERSELF watching the parade! Her hair was more amazing than I could have ever imagined. It was so amazing to be part of this demonstration of the strength of women, especially in a place such as Cameroon where women are responsible for so much but are also so oppressed. Women in Cameroon are responsible for growing all of the crops to feed the family, raising the children, doing all of the housework, and often also must have a small paying job in addition in order to raise money. Men, meanwhile, are for the most part unemployed and spend a large portion of the day drinking beer and hanging out on the side of the road.

In the accompanying wave of pride that I felt on Women's Day, I decided to take up some of the men I encountered in conversation about women's role in Cameroonian society. I found out that, though I consider myself to be generally middle-of-the-road regarding women's rights in the United States (neither radically feminist nor indifferent to the issue), my views on women's rights make me the equivalent of a bra-burning feminazi.

My favorite conversation began when a Cameroonian man in a bus asked me to marry him. It was after a day of exasperating discussions with men about their perceptions of women. Feeling sassy and full of feminine pride in my Women’s Day dress, I told him that I could never marry a Cameroonian man because they all think that they are better than women. He immediately stated that he certainly didn't feel that way, but women simply have their place in the home. The man is in charge of making big decisions, earning the income, and being the “chef du maison.” The woman, meanwhile, had more responsibility and was thus more important in the home, but she was still to respect the power and authority of her husband.

I decided to reveal that, chez moi, my mother makes more money than my father and usually has the final say in major family decisions. He was absolutely appalled and automatically assumed that my father was bitter and unhappy in this upside-down relationship. I explained that it was normal in the United States for relationships to be this way, and I believed firmly in the sharing of authority between men and women in a relationship. All of the men—–there were four by this point who had joined in to combat the crazy American in the bus—agreed that I had a complex that many women shared whereby fearing subjugation by my husband, I was trying to escape my traditional position. It's more important, they said, to find power and strength in my feminine role and stop trying to “be like a man,” because I could never fill the same roles as men in society.

This conversation went back and forth between my explanations of gender in the United States and their explanations of gender in Cameroon, until finally an older man turned around and stated firmly: “It is in the Bible. Men are superior to women, and the woman is submissive to him in the relationship. It is an absolute truth.” All of the men looked at me, and I didn't know what to say. Being unfamiliar with the Bible myself, I had no educated response to offer. I had come up against this argument before in conversations and always considered it a dead end. Coming from a progressive Catholic university, I feel shocked that I don't have a better response to this statement. Can someone please comment with some advice on what to say? Luckily, this comment came just as it was my turn to get off the bus, and left the men with the parting statement that Cameroonian women are stronger and more capable then these men give them credit for.

I decided to debrief this conversation with my host brother, asking him if it was possible to be a good Christian and believe in gender equality. He told me, “You can believe in gender equality, yes, as long as you know in your heart that your husband has slightly more competence than you.” Happy Women's Day!