Men As Partners Program

I have begun a program at the high school that focuses on men becoming allies for women in regards to gender equality and health. It’s a program supported by Peace Corps that hopes to create “men as partners.” Topics include discussions on gender expectations, messages on sexuality, HIV, condom use, alcohol abuse, violence, romantic partners, and anger management skills. It is something I am very interested in teaching as I believe these topics need more attention in this society. I was very excited to begin the course. From my own experiences here, I have seen that men hold the highest rank in society and often experience more privilege and entitlement than women in this culture. To me, there often appears to be inequality. Whether it is a stranger I have never met before who thinks he is entitled to come to my door and ask me for sex, whether it is a man saying “I don’t need to serve myself because there is a woman here,” or men referring to any woman as “baby,” or a man taking the last piece of food and upon my inquiry as to why he gets the last piece over the four other people in the room him telling me “because I am a man,” it seems that there are countless cases that depict a disparity between the genders. That, of course, is not to say that every man shares these beliefs, or that people are even aware of it or intending it. And in no way am I trying to say any other country has really figured things out. It’s not that people here frown upon women or deliberately think lesser of them. However, from what I have observed, there are some very serious gender roles and expectations that are adhered to very closely.

Thus, I was very surprised on the first day of classes when I started the discussion with the question, “Do you think there is gender inequality in Cameroon?” And the class in unison responded, “No!” I rephrased my question and said, “You think there is complete gender equality?” Again, “Yes!” I decided to take a quick look at chores people were expected to do around the house based on their gender. We divided the group into boys and girls and had each write a list of things they were expected to do for their household in a day. The boys came up with two items that would benefit the whole family (working at the farm, and carrying things back from the farm). Originally their list included things like brushing their teeth, but we decided those types of activities should not really be included. The girls then read their own list. It had over 14 items, ranging from cleaning the compound, to doing the laundry, to working at the farm, to cooking and serving all the meals. I asked again if they thought there was equality between genders, and this time the group said no.

After the lesson, I ran into my female co-worker and decided to ask her about the students’ initial response. I asked her the same question, “Do you think there is gender inequality in Cameroon?” Again, she said “no.” At that very moment, she was carrying three large pots and some food ingredients to go to a man’s house to prepare him a meal. He is a grown man living by himself. She is not married to him, not directly related to him. She left her work at the hospital in the middle of the day so that she could walk to his house and prepare him some food because he asked her, and expected her to do it. I explained this to her, and said that he was inadvertently telling her that her work was less important than her “duty” to feed him. Was he not capable of preparing food for himself? She laughed. Probably because it was such an American viewpoint, and for her own culture it is what she expected to do, not just to feed a man, but to care for a fellow person. She did say though that yes of course there is gender inequality in Cameroon, and look what she is currently doing. So when I asked her why she initially said no, she replied that in general, if she is talking to a male friend, there is no inequality.

It seems like it will be a gradual process. So far, the class has proved very interesting for me, but not exactly in the ways I had originally expected. In one of our next lessons, when asking girls what they would want boys to know about their gender, they gave two responses. One, that men should pick good wives, and two, that men should stop calling them prostitutes because of how they acted or the clothes or jewelry they chose to wear. It has been a learning experience for me as well, to say the least. I hope to continue the class and soon we will move on to some sex education, so we will see how that goes!