Ghana, Promoting

Practical Women’s Day: WomenWhoInspire

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Over the last week or two, I have been involved in a project to showcase inspirational women in Ghana. Here is the introduction to the  project and further down my contribution!

The first International Women’s Day (IWD) was first held in 1911 and every year since women have been celebrated and the issues that affect them highlighted on the 8th of March. While IWD started as a way of highlighting what was unjust, wrong and harmful to women, today we can also celebrate how far we’ve come and recommit to the work yet to be done.

WomenWhoInspire is an online project created by a group of Ghanaian women as a contribution to the 2014 International Women’s Day theme: Inspiring Change!

WomenWhoInspire is a reminder through video, photos and words that women everywhere are powerful, beautiful and truly inspiring. Join us as we celebrate WomenWhoInspire over the next two months. Let us celebrate the social, political and economic achievements of women! Let us advocate for equality for everyone! Share your story or that of another amazing Woman who inspires!

We want to encourage women to record themselves or other women. Here are some guidelines!

Suggestion for questions for 1 min video:

  1. “My name is … and I hope my story inspires you”,

  2. I am a / the …. eg mother, student, Manager of…[they can give multiple roles]

  3. I use technology to / when… eg I use technology when I use to communicate with friends and to get my work done.

  4. Another woman who inspires me is ….

  5. My three words of inspiration to women are…

Upload

When you upload your video, be sure to use the hashtag #WomenhoInspire if you want us to find it and share it!

My video

Here is the video I made, of an inspiring woman in my life, my mother-in-law Grace Dolly Acquah (apologies for poor sound).

An interesting aspect is how fun it has been working together with other women, Most of the work has been done online, but today we met Away From Keyboard and it was great!

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Personal

What Do Women Want ?

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Inspired by Ghanaian radio channel Joy FM’s discussion this morning, I feel like I have to make a comment on this topic, “What Do Women Want?”.

The discussion had a strong start. The host linked the discussion to yesterday’s International Women’s Day and aimed for understanding. A man called in and suggested that “a man who knows what his woman wants is a happy man”, explaining that then you know what is expected of you and can have harmony in your home.

However, soon the discussion was flooded with men calling in with grave generalizations. Several of them were suggesting that

“women do not know what they want themselves, so how can we know?”

or that women are “unpredictable” and “moody”.

How very convenient to say that! A way out for those too lazy to actually care about what women want?

Fellow blogger Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (see her co-blogger Malaika’s International Women’s Day post) was a guest of the show and shared some levelheaded and feminist comments, for instance suggesting that men calling women “moody” and “hormonal” is a grave exaggeration many times used as an excuse to meet expectations.

On Joy FM’s Facebook page the discussion was at this time going wild! Some comments were debating materialistic wants and intangible ones

“women want time and attention when they are with a rich man and wants financial security when they find themselves with a “poor man””

Others again were holding forward how very complicated women are.

Then Akorfa A. Pomeyie stated:
“Women are not complicated, we are very simple”
and I want to agree with her.

We women are just like anybody else. We like to be given respect, we like being listened to, we like it when you prioritize us and our wants and needs.

At this time, my phone rang. It was my husband calling to say good morning and ask how I was doing as this morning he left before I woke up. I smiled and said I was doing just fine.

That attentive phonecall, my friends, is how simple it is to give a woman what she wants.

The discussion is still going on at Joy FM’s Facebook page.

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Parenting, Personal

International Women’s Day: A Personal Reflection

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Last year around this time, I was pregnant with my first child. It was an amazing and literally nauseating experience. It was a reminder of what it is to be a woman.

Being a woman is at times a very bodily experience – growing breasts and hips, learning how to dance, coordinating movements in some nice shoe, climbing trees or other remote places for solitude.

Being a woman is filled with pain – headaches from trying to remember everything, cramps from the monthly period, silent but sharp stings of betrayal, the shockingly forceful pains of child labor.

Being a woman is joyous – growing in your mother’s shadow, learning to express yourself freely in words, feeling the cold water on your body as you dive in, being someone’s mother.

On a day like this, I think of everything that unites us women. I think of everything that separates us. Clearly, there is not a single experience of womanhood, however there is an attitude I feel is common to all women. An attitude I find it heard to put words on, but something along the lines of “change is inevitable”.

We change. We grow. We transform. The world changes.

This is a BloggingGhana universal post. See others take part in the discussion here. Female sign borrowed from Zazzle.com

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