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MORAL SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO CONTROL ALL WOMEN

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Sir,

The nuclear family is the first part of society that shapes us. Our parents and siblings play a major role on how we choose to live. Perhaps, the second most influential institution beyond the nuclear family is our educational system.

We look up to our teachers and for the most part take what they say and the information in our textbooks as valid and valuable. However, there may come a time that we don’t agree with what we are being taught. Yet even here our rebellion is in the context of society. Often ,we know more what we are against than what we are for.


The presence or absence of faith and religion in our lives is another source within society that shapes our personal values. Sooner or later you will have contact with a wide variety of spiritual choices. Each exists in our culture and society. Each is a positive or negative influence towards our personal values.

The way in which moral values and the concept of right or wrong has pressed hard on the female species. It is very common that one is seen as immoral just because they committed a deed which is not expected from a person of that particular gender. It leaves the argument hanging then, that our male counterparts will not face the same discrimination from society. So then, the boundary of moral values becomes ‘you can’t do this because you are a girl; ‘girls are not allowed to do that’. 


We live in a context and not a vacuum. Our culture and the society around us play a very dominant role in the values we choose. Sometimes this is planned, overt and intentional. Sometimes it is unplanned, unseen and unintentional. Sometimes we choose to accept the values of others, sometimes we choose to rebel against them.

Either way, they are influential. Gender-based distinctions in piety define women’s morality. Women are culturally defined as closer to God. They are expected to behave differently around their husbands and other men, silenced in church, while men frequently display authoritarian and aggressive behaviour towards individuals whose traditions and family lives are considered uncivilised and immoral. While sexual pleasure is important in marriage, women’s role is chosen, not to choose a mate.

Marriage involves obedience, but women can achieve moral authority as wives and as mothers through their advocacy of the moral system. Despite the diversity of expectations, we feel these moral systems were all designed to control women. We are fighting for a world where a woman can proudly say; ‘I’m nobody but myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make me somebody else.’  This means never stopping to fight in the fight of authenticity.

S Lukhele

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