My Life

I grew up in an environment where a man is seen as the head of the house-hold. This was more than just a privilege, it is an accepted norm within the society and it's one that really made me re-think my position in life. At the village, gender roles are defined quite early on, as a young boy or girl you're introduced to what is expected of you from the society and one grows into those expectations without questioning them. I grew up watching women perform all household duties from cooking, cleaning, cultivating, sowing, looking after animals, looking after kids and so forth. While the men's responsibilities included for looking after cattle, cultivating and cutting down trees. I realized that women generally had much more to do and it didn't seem quite right to me.

It's this background that had me thinking that men actually play a very important role in gender equality, or at least they should, because neither men nor women exist in isolation. All institutions across the country feature both men and women, be it in the Church, School or the Work place. Therefore, there's a serious need for men and woman to partner in the fight for Gender Equality. I feel men can play a bigger role in many ways; first, by changing their mindsets towards the whole issue of gender equality and giving a helping hand where they can.

There are a lot of challenges as far as achieving gender equality is concerned. Culture remains the biggest and dominating challenge for both women and men in that it keeps pulling us back to the way our forefathers did things. For example, it's not culturally accepted for a man to cook and if he's found cooking, he is met with a lot of name calling and looked down upon. If these cultural norms are not addressed, then all efforts to have equal rights for men and women are in vain.

Another challenge is the lack of spaces where men can provide a support system for women without (the fear of) being judged. Women themselves don't give the opportunity to men to cook, look after the baby, and clean the house, even though they know we are simply helping them and some women will even question his "manhood". Both men and women need to accept and understand that it is not unusual for a man to help around the house or for a woman to have as much say in decision-making as a man.

Men's attitude towards women need to change altogether, because the majority of men see women as nothing more than sex objects which also contributes to the rampant mistreating and abuse of women.

My journey in the fight for gender equality started at the University of Namibia, when I joined the peer education group. It gave me a different mindset about people in general particularly women and helped me learn to appreciate them. I gained an interest in women's health, careers, studies, their interests in life with the aim of helping them and understand what they go through in