Women at the Crossroads: Balancing Ambition, Family, and Societal Expectations

 

What is it about women that makes them more inclined to some specific positions like the arts, literature, housekeepers, and sometimes seen as incompetent? Do women wish to break the glass ceiling? To many people, they attribute women to “learning to be helpless”. The life of a woman is a journey sometimes, extremely beautiful or disastrous depending on the opportunities that comes her way. While others set out to strive hard to make ends meet, others prefer to go through the traditional way (housewives).

Due to the value society has placed on women, people have different interpretations of who  woman are. In most cases, people attribute women to care takers who have limited space to operate in professional settings though there are always exceptions. Early marriages have made a lot of women reserved mostly in the rural areas. They mostly become housekeepers, nurture their children, and work on their farmlands to prepare crops for harvest. Could it be that there are little to no jobs in their communities? Or society has carved women to behave in that manner?

The cities of Accra are choked. This can be attributed to the fact that it is the capital city and has a greater part of the flourishing businesses where one can choose from. Well, that is far from the truth. Many people live in the rural areas to Accra just to make ends meet but the reality and frustrations dawns on them upon arrival. Some women in this situation end up being prostitutes, armed robbers and all the bad conduct you can think of. Such people sometimes do it out of their will. Several women brought up in the cities have seen little to no job opportunities after tertiary in the so-called capital city. The hustling and bustling that many people set out from dawn to dusk earn them only a little amount which can not serve three square meals a day.

Those that are well paid are the ones who have secured a job in renowned professional settings. We have a few representations of women in the political terrain. I normally ask myself if there are some specific jobs for males and females. Well, That’s what I have noticed. Being a woman comes with a whole lot of responsibilities. At some point when you have a family and a career, the pressure keeps escalating, and indeed one aspect overshadows the other. Either your family becomes more demanding or your career. In light of these, women who choose family set out to go in for some specific jobs like teaching, nursing, and in most cases entrepreneurship so they can overcome the pressure.

As the first and foremost point of socialization begins at home, women play a vital role in the upbringing of a child. They put the house into good shape, mould children to become better people  and guide them to what is deemed right in society. For these alone, they are highly recognized and celebrated for their hard work. These throws more light on why “Mother’s Day ” is deeply felt and celebrated in recent times across the globe.

Several women are on the verge to change the narrative. We have women taken good career paths just to fit into the world of work and keep their families as expected. A career woman will regard family planning as necessary to save her some time to blend the opportunities that comes her way at any point in time.

The media on the other hand has portrayed women as people with fewer opinions thus having less opportunity to play roles as leaders or professionals. Due to how effective the media is used in communication, it serves as a conduit to transmit all forms of information to a larger audience. The portrayal of women as sex objects trickles down to the assumption “women learn to be helpless”.

We can’t, therefore, base our assumptions on mere conjectures. Women are very hardworking and there is a need for them to be accorded that respect and recognition. Very soon, the world will hear from them. They will break the glass ceiling and get to the top.

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Written by Humu Shaibu Asibi (10313906)