This Christmas, let’s abolish gendered roles in household work and especially in the kitchen.
The so-called festive season headlined by the celebration of Christmas – is now largely a commercial holiday in which most people indulge irrespective of faith – on December 25.
The week before and after this is an orgy of mirth, music, over-eating, and just good old fun with family and loved ones. On that day, most people suspend enmities and hostilities.
I know I do, though I don’t forget those who wish me ill. But seriously, we think of Christmas as a season to exhale, hope and of renewal. One thing that makes me sad is that it seems a lot of people – especially notable figures – kick the bucket around this time. Little spoken about is the hard labour that goes into making Christmas festive.
We still live in a very unequal and inequitable world in which one of the stubbornest cleavages is of gender. A few stats. In Kenya, for every 100 units of pay, women earn 80 per cent of what men do. In education, there’s near parity at primary school but the gap becomes wider the higher you climb the ladder with girls and women falling far behind.
Women constitute only a third of senior management. Only 3 per cent of women in Kenya own land individually though they do most of the farm labour. In Kenya, women do 80 per cent of all unpaid household labour divided annually into 26 billion hours for women and 5 billion for men. Unpaid labour is Sh2 trillion a year or 23 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
High poverty rates
If these numbers aren’t shocking, then you need your noggin examined. These economic indicators translate into high poverty rates for women. In tandem, poverty among women and girls is the core reason for their powerlessness across sectors – public, private, family. Powerlessness leads to domestic violence and killings of women by men and boys.
Sexual violence, including rape by men and boys of girls and women, is pervasive among relatives, strangers, and intimate partners including married couples. If true statistics were to be collected, I would hazard to guess that over 80 per cent of all married women have been raped at least once by their husbands. This culture of misogyny and cruelty by the male gender against the female gender steals the vitality and humanity of girls and women.
Patriarchy, which is the social system that rules all phases of Kenyan life in the private and public squares, needs to be overthrown to free girls and women. It’s akin to a system of slavery or enslavement of one race of a people by another as it was in the United States where Black Africans were enslaved by white men for nearly two centuries. What stuns me most is that men live with the female gender everywhere in what one might consider ‘loving” relationships – aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, grandchildren, and grandparents.
The female gender is in your house – literally. Unlike race, where “the other” most likely lives in a different neighbourhood, the “other gender” shares a bed or bathroom with you.
I am the father of three men and two women (no longer boys or girls) and I know from first-hand experience that generally the former are closer to their mother while the latter are closer to their dad. Say “amen” if you agree. So, how does it turn out that boys and men who are closer to their mom’s end up as happy and uncritical practitioners of the worst forms of misogyny? Why do we, as men, oppress and abuse the gender that nurtured us and protected us, including carrying us in the womb for a miserable nine months? When did we decide that we must be monsters to our nurturers and act in concert to do so with our dads who mostly were absent in our most tender years?
Since their earliest years, I taught my boys that domestic work doesn’t have a gender. By example, I taught them to clean, wash, cook, and do grocery shopping. That’s what my mom taught me. These skills became extremely important when I was thrust into exile as a young man without a penny. I also discovered that my culinary skills were one uncontested route to a woman’s heart.
If a boy or man eats, relieves himself, or sleeps in a bed, he must cook and clean. There are no enslaved girls and women to wait on you hand and foot.
On normal days and especially on big holidays in the United States such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, we all cook in my household.
So, on this Christmas, let’s abolish gendered roles in household work and especially in the kitchen. Boys and men must not become parasites in the home. Cut vegetables and meat, cook, clean. Don’t just sit in the living room and drink yourself silly as the girls and women in your house toil. Let all real men cook and clean on Xmas.
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Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. He’s Senior Advisor on Constitutional Affairs to President William Ruto. @makaumutua.
