I am a big fan of Game of Thrones series. You would say that the reason is that the books are New York Times best sellers, or that it is a beloved pastime for many people around the world. I admit it. Those are the reasons which made me start watching it but as I continued to watch one episode to the next one, I found myself caught into the way Martin portrays women as “people”. I simply enjoy spending time with excellently written women characters from self supporting Ygritte, manipulative Cersei, brave Arya Stark, to determined Daenerys Targaryen.
These women love life and fight for it. They prove that while relationships with men (whether their fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers, etc) are parts of their lives, they are not defined by them. I tip my hat to a writer so determined to break away from the traditional gender roles of a genre so heavily populated with stereotypes and condensation. Although the enormous popularity of a series with actively interesting women is promising, we still have a long way to go.
However to get at the point that none will be surprised to see a movie in which women are self reliable, women have to be independent in real life. It hurts me to see that the vast majority of world’s poor are women. Two thirds of the world’s illiterates are female. I don’t believe that it is because women are somehow created inferior to men; I think that it is because women exclude themselves from engaging in some activities that lead to development thinking that they are only meant to bear basic needs of the family. Some women think that they are weak and wait to be empowered, but with this end in mind they can’t achieve great things. Others try to be creative but when they are laughed at because they are women, they stop dreaming and wait to be empowered. My question is “Haven’t we been enough empowered? One of the millennium goals is to promote gender equality and empowerment of women, many cooperatives are created with a goal of empowering women, some banks offer special credits to women projects, etc; what else are we waiting for? What do we want to overcome barriers that hold us from success?
I know some people would try to convince me saying that women are inferior creatures, that we’re created that way. That’s not true; we are as capable of everything as men are. For example Elizabeth I (1533-1603), the queen of England during the time of great economic and social change led Britain to become one of the world’s dominant superpower. A genius scientist, Marie Curie discovered radioactivity and won a Nobel Prize in sciences. In poetry, women weren’t left behind. Emily Dickinson was a gifted poet in 1880s and some of her poems such as “death is a dialogue” are still known all over the world. I refuse to admit that the same God who gifted these women with courage to achieve their dreams forgot to create other women with the same potentials. Call me a feminist if you want to, but I dream of day when all women will be self reliant and achieve great things. That day no author will be recognize to have portrayed them as “people”. After all nobody writes articles about how some writes do a great job portraying men as “people”.
By Emilie Umuhire( Bridge2Rwanda scholar)
Kin
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