A few days ago as I went through some tweets about feminism it was clear to me that very many people do not understand the principle behind feminism, especially those who call themselves feminists. Anyways, I am not here to join that conversation, instead those conversations got me searching for positive happenings around women empowerment in general.
I found out that technological advancements in the last five decades have favoured women in the area of traditionally assigned roles. Here is why I am making this assertion. In most of Africa, women have been culturally assigned the role of a homemaker, so all chores linked to housekeeping tend to fall under this umbrella.
Although with modernization and the increase in education of women, these roles are still primarily carried out by women, except that it has become more convenient.
Examples of how technological advancement has favoured women
- Families that can afford gas cookers do not have their women cooking with firewood anymore.
- Instead of fetching water from the stream, some women have water supplied directly into the house, while others fetch from a general tap.
- Eating pounded yam is no more as hectic as it used to be since we now have yam pounding machine and even yam flour. So women do not need to use mortar and pestle anymore.
- The washing machine has taken off the burden of washing with their hands
- The baby diapers have removed the stress of washing napkins
- Instead of grinding with a stone, women can now use blenders
There might be others, but these are the few I could think of at the time. There are exceptions to this assertion though; the economic and educational status of a family plays a large role in determining whether the women in those homes would benefit from such advancements. We also have the challenge of some people preferring the old ways of doing things and for example cannot enjoy pounded yam except it is actually pounded.
Women have benefited from these advancements in technology because innovators have listened to them. I still wonder what we can do to fast track development that favours men with regard to their traditionally assigned roles of being the breadwinners of the family.
