Men teach Women Lead!

I remember just last month my teenage nephew asked if I could teach him how to play Chess because he wanted to impress a girl who was a Chess player. He has recently moved here to stay with my niece, my mother and myself. My niece is a really strong Chess player who has even travelled internationally to play Chess representing South Africa. So when my nephew asked me to teach him, I referred him to his cousin whom he has gotten so close to and spends so much time with everyday; this would make their quality time more productive since they will be sharing Chess wisdom. I was not prepared for his response especially since I assumed he had so much respect for her after she had taught him how to cook; I mean they spend so much time chatting and laughing together and I expect that this means they have mutual respect for each other.

Before my nephew moved to live with us, my niece and I would share the house chores equally between the two of us. We would alternate between cooking and washing dishes: on days that I cooked, she would do the dishes and vice versa. So when my nephew came, I told him he would inherit my share of the house chores, he agreed but he unfortunately could not cook, which I thought was shameful (in the words of Chimamanda Adichie : "I have never thought it made sense to leave such a crucial thing, the ability to nourish one's self , in the hands of others.") So I asked my niece to teach him, and she did and now he is a good enough cook. We enjoy his cooking every second day. So naturally, when he asked if I could teach him Chess, I though the same teacher who was good enough to give him the cooking skill and is as equally skilled in Chess could do the job but he refused saying "I don't want to be taught by a girl!."

At the local Library I had taught some grown ups how to play Chess and they were getting the hang of it, steadily grasping the concepts of the game and getting some confidence as they started winning some games against untrained visitors who have learned how to play from under a tree somewhere! As a way to demostrate to them that they were not there yet, there was still a lot to learn, I would bring in some of the kids I had taught a while back who are really good players and they would embarass the grown ups who would approach the game as if their life experiences gave them an advantage over the Chess board. The week before, I had brought an eleven year old boy and he had all of them begging for mercy.
In the following week I brought my niece who was 13 at the time, two years older than the boy. As soon as she came in I could hear all the men claiming "I would not be beaten by a little girl in Chess. If she beats me I will quit and never play Chess again." She beat them all. They were all heartbroken, sad and confused. Instead of being proud of this brilliant girl they chose to make her feel as though she had done something wrong embarrassing grown up man.

I remember my mother used to tell me how she was always the best learner in all her classes growing up. She excelled in everything and always took first position until she reached Form 1, (Standard 6, now Grade 8) and her father, my grandfather told her he was not going to waste his money sending a girl to school. He thought it would be a waste of money that should be used to buy Cabbage instead. He rationalised his actions by explaining that as a girl, my mother will be taken as somebody's wife and leave his house to take care of another man's house. Which was true to some extent, but even as she moved to live with my father, she still provided for her father and mother and even became financially responsible for all her siblings. After she left my father, she came back to be the head of her father's house carrying all the household responsibilities including building them a proper house. That is because she managed to take herself through school while working in the farms as a kid.

The barriers are shifting but the perceptions still seem to be one sided

South Africa has just created history by introducing its first ever cabinet with an equal number of female ministers as that of male ministers. This is historical and groundbreaking considering the plight of women to be recognised as leaders and generally be offered equal opportunities to prove their abilities. There was a time when South Africans were hopeful to get a woman President but then hey, getting equal representation in the ministries is also good enough. We have to always remember however, that the war for equal recognition is far from over. We still live in a patriarchal society and the sad part is that these female ministers will have to play by the already set systematic rules that favour masculinity.
They will have to work with men who grew up not wanting to learn cognitive mind sports from their female cousins and men who grew up believing that losing to a female was an embarrasment. These women will have to lead men who refuse to be led by women and it would be sad to find that there would be some women too who prefer male leaders to women leaders, because they too are daughters of the same society that raises these men.

The biggest challenge, I believe is the changing of people's perceptions about leaders. In our societies, almost all leadership roles are automatically associated with maleness and females are expected to play the supportive roles. It is in our movies; it is in our schools; it is in our churches; it is in our homes and even in our politics. For as long as the words "Starring", "Principal" , "Pastor", "Head" and "President" trigger a male image, we have a long way to go.

It is the responsibility of these female leaders to uplift the image of women in society by becoming more visible as leaders and unapologetically more vocal and feminine in their leadership styles. I have had the pleasure of watching a video of some powerful women in business explain to their audience how the modern office environment favours the leadership qualities mostly attributed to women: such attributes as compassion, emotional intelligence and transparency among others. The visibility of female leaders using attributes traditionally associated to women to win trust and garner support from the nation will be necessary to convince the girl-child that they do not need to become masculine in order to become leaders, they are enough as they are; such visibility will be very crucial in challenging and possibly changing the stereotypical leadership image.

I personally feel that the most impact could be made by changing the system which favours a specific gender and challenge completely the stereotypical images of both genders. If the trend setting pioneering move is to be truly admirable, it should be signed into law that every cabinet should have at least 50% female representation. Five years is a very short time for making lasting impact and completely challenging leadership stereotypes. We have learned that in the USA, although the 2 terms served by former President Barrack Obama helped in eliminating colour from many young people's visualisation of the word "President", to the many old Americans it has served as an 8 year systematic glitch that had to be over compansated for. We have to worry aswell that if the women who will be serving as ministers have no powers to influence systematic change, their time in office will soon be considered a glitch that needs correcting by the many bigots that surround us. Even so, it will not be a surprise if next election we get a female president with a cabinet of 90 per cent male ministers. As long as the system is geared towards masculinity, having female leaders will make little difference because in trying to prove efficiency the female leaders will also appoint males to other supportive leadership roles.

If we look at the fact that the minister of Basic Education in the past five years or so has been a women and yet the stats showed just last year that even though women made up over 72.5 percent of teachers, only 37.3 percent of Principals were female (www.africacheck.org). This numbers maintained the perception that Women Teach while Men Lead. So in essence, women teach men how to be leaders while the men in their leadership roles try to surpress the women keeping them as their subordinates.

So as much as the responsibility to change the perceptions is in the shoulders of the appointed ministers, it also rests in the shoulders of each teacher and parent to be cognisant and attentive of the ways their words and actions maintain or challenge these imagery stereotypes.
These subliminals are embedded in the ways we react when a girl-child has cracked open her cellphone to remove a simcard or memory card versus when a boy-child does it. This could be in the way we are "understanding" when a girl-child loses a Chess game to a boy-child and find it "unbelievable" and awe inspiring when she wins- it is even destructive when we find it to be embarassing to the boy-child if he loses to a girl-child. Infact, I have noticed that as a result of this, it becomes more painful to the boy-child when he looses to a girl-child. This is because the boy-child feels like he has lost more than just a chess game; he also looses his image as a potential "man" and appears weak to his peers. This is why in practice some of them even try to cheat when they see a checkmate looming. Some break up the pieces in some half-baked show of bravado. In some instances, a few have quit playing Chess for real.
These are some phenomena I had first witnessed when I first took my Chess kids to the district federation's Chess tournaments. I would be surprised by the caucasion kids' breakdown after they lost to my kids. These kids would cry hysterically that the arbiter would have to find their parents to calm them down. The loss would break them, it appeared as if loosing to an African child shuttered their whole reality: it challenged all they had learned or had been taught as true about themselves in relation to the African child or about the African in general. Of course, after a while the kids from this distric stopped crying, they had gradually unlearned the lessons that hurt them and learned new ones. We continued to play other districs and had the same effect on the caucasion kids of both genders as well. It was exciting being responsible for changing social perceptions through the Chess game.

I am hopeful that after this 5 year term, the perception of the political leader would have changed, if nowhere else, at least here in Mpumalanga where the premier is also a Women. The truth is, it is not that women have not been leaders and rolemodels in society, it is only that their roles of leadership have not been recognised as such and not quite celebrated as the roles played by men. It is important for the dream of any child to remain alive and seem possible, that they see and witness role models that look like them.

A lot could be said in this topic but I am afraid I might loose direction if I continued. I will leave the rest for you to add on the comments section. I have daughters and sons that I wish could one day read your comments and feel the paradigm shifting.

I have no idea who made this but I feel it has some significance here. What do you think?

Some references:
https://africacheck.org/reports/women-teach-and-men-lead-gender-inequality-in-south-african-schools-examined/

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