Why courage alone cannot explain women’s risky choices
Women can take extraordinary risks when love, trust, hope and vulnerability converge, but courage alone cannot explain those choices.
What you need to know:
- Women can take extraordinary risks when love, trust, hope and vulnerability converge, but courage alone cannot explain those choices.
- From online relationships to life-changing decisions, women sometimes take leaps of faith that outsiders struggle to understand.
“Women are more courageous than men!” When a female guest speaker said those words during a forum I was attending, I was stunned. I was curious to get to the heart of her message, but I was not particularly convinced because the claim already felt too broad.
She was speaking about some remarkable risks some women are willing to take, often in situations where trust has not yet been fully established. Her first example was women who follow men they barely know to their homes, hotel rooms or other private spaces. I suspect this has always happened in some form, but it is more visible now because the digital space rarely keeps secrets.
The sociology student in me had some possible explanations about why some people are usually willing to take disproportionate amounts of risk, particularly risks whose consequences can cost lives. Poverty is a key driver. Love is another reason a woman (or a man) can go to the ends of the world in pursuit of another, regardless of the risks involved. Naivety is also a factor particularly when people are younger.
As I listened to the speaker, I made some sense of the hypothesis that she was making, and her definition of courage. Human beings in general can make extraordinary leaps of faith when love, trust, hope and vulnerability converge, and women may experience or express that dynamic in particular ways.
If you have ever read a news report or watched something on social media and gaped, wondering, “But who in their right mind would even do that?” I might have an answer. While there are no guarantees in life, many of us like to believe that we can read situations and people well enough to protect ourselves. But relationships are complicated, and people do not always reveal who they truly are at the beginning.
Sometimes, qualities such as love, loyalty, patience and the willingness to give someone another chance can also make it harder to recognise danger. I once had a conversation with a few colleagues about women who are killed by their intimate partners, and something one person said has stayed with me: “It is not about how long you have known the person. The difference is that some women meet murderers, and others do not meet murderers.”
When I was 20, my best friend at the time (she was 22) boarded a plane to the US to get married to the love of her life. My friend met this man through a dating site and after a year of mostly virtual interactions and a one-week visit to Kenya by the guy, my friend was convinced that she loved this man enough to marry him. With the guy’s support, she started her visa application process. She was excited when the visa came out. I do not remember the details, all I knew was that she was required to get married to the man within three months of her arrival in the US, otherwise, she faced the risk of deportation.
I remember standing at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport one hot afternoon when I went to see her off. She told me the man would make arrangements for her to continue with her university education in the US. Part of me was unsettled because I am generally not one given to those kinds of risks. We were in our third year at the time and I could not wrap my head around how she could stop right in the middle of what was familiar, the people who knew and cared about her, and the education she cherished so much to pursue life with a stranger she only really interacted with online?
Over the years, I have never stopped asking myself what kind of drive would have made my friend take that kind of risk. But I think I have finally found an answer to that question. Perhaps even some closure about my friend's departure in pursuit of an untested promise.
One thing is certain: saying that women are courageous is a good place to start a theory, but it is not enough to explain the choices women make. Courage can coexist with fear. So can doubt, anxiety, hope and vulnerability. Perhaps that is what makes the boldness of women so difficult to understand, and perhaps why it deserves to be studied more closely.
The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG ([email protected]).
