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Honour our women
IN almost all societies, men are the
heads and women are the hearts of families. Heads, where the
brain is, rationalise. They think and direct the body. Hearts,
which pump blood to keep every cell alive in the body, feed,
nourish and nurture.
These physiological functions of our bodies seem to have defined
our social and psychological roles as well – the man is
protector and provider while the woman nourishes and nurtures.
That head and heart belong to one body and one needs the other
to function but in the social behavioural context, this has been
little appreciated. Over time, a terrible injustice has occurred
in human behaviour. Like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal
Farm, the head has risen above the rest of the body and
suppressed the heart.
Our character and relationship with one another might be better
shaped were we to realise that the brain can survive scarce
moments without the heart but the heart can survive for years
without the brain.
One author, Gerard W Hughes, once wrote: “God has given us minds
so that we may understand, and hearts that we may constantly
seek deeper understanding.”
We should use both mind and heart in our daily lives but where
the heart is, there our brain should be so that we are
constantly seeking greater understanding. It makes sense. For if
seeking knowledge, truth, love and lasting peace are truly
mankind’s never ending quest, then women play an equal, if not
greater role in that quest, because they use both mind and heart
to great effect.
And perhaps love and lasting peace have eluded mankind for so
long is because we have placed so much emphasis and invested so
much in men and less in our womenfolk. The truth is, woman have
always played a prominent role. They just have not been
recognised or been appreciated as such.
I got a shocking introduction to the strength of the “weaker
sex” once at Karkar Island, Madang province. I was being shown
around Gaubin Hospital by that great self-taught “bush” surgeon,
Dr Tschake. He informed me that a mother in labour was having
tremendous difficulty and that unless he did a Caesarean
section, both mother and child would perish.
Apparently, he had delivered two previous babies the same way.
This one was the last, he explained to the mother and her
husband. He said that he had to tie her fallopian tubes in that
operation or the next pregnancy would be fatal for her.
She listened carefully to the doctor’s words and then asked a
question that has always stuck in my mind: “Dokta, bebi bai
orait?”
Never a thought did she give to the doctor’s scalpel or fear for
her life that something might go wrong as she had already been
told that the third operation was not without risk.
The operation was successful and mother and child lived. This I
learnt much later because when I saw the yellow fatty tissue of
the woman’s stomach exposed and the head of the baby emerged
through the opening the doctor had made, I gave the nurse
assistant another job to do by promptly collapsing in a dead
faint on the operation floor, in operation gown, mask and all.
I have witnessed natural births over the years and I wonder each
time what agony I might be in if I were about to excrete a base
ball. A baby’s head is ever so much bigger than a baseball and
every woman has had to live through that agony from the Queen of
England down to the pregnant adolescent. And will continue to do
so.
And yet each time I have never failed to marvel at the way woman
in labour might be screaming in pain but whispering all the time
about whether or not their baby is going to be alright.
A garbled paraphrase of a quote from the Bible keeps popping up
in my head in these instances: No greater love had she than to
lay down her life for another. Many times, far too many in PNG’s
case by the reckoning of the World Health Organisation, the
mother does lay down her life for her child. And sadly, more
often than not, the mother and infant both do not survive the
ordeal.
It is not only in their reproductive roles that our woman show
strength, love and concern. In almost every other sphere of
life, our woman have made their long, often lonely and as often
arduous, journey towards recognition and acceptance as critical
partners in the development of a decent human society.
They have fought discrimination and other social barriers every
inch of the way. Yet I sense that we are making headway at
least. Watching our woman athletes haul in the medals in the SP
Games in Samoa made me proud of our girls as well as the boys.
Over the weekend, PNG’s only woman Parliamentarian and Community
Development Minister Dame Carol Kidu was talking about pathways
and networking and the need to build a better community by using
the strengths of our churches, our civil society organisations
and our womenfolk and not just through the Government system.
People build communities through relationships in PNG, she said.
We cannot apply and impose foreign system to build our society
as we have been trying to do over 30 odd years.
The gathering she was addressing was graduation of
non-governmental organisation officers and it was most pleasing
to note that women dominated in this particular graduation and
at the function that followed. Among the most positive,
comparatively non-violent, and consistent force available
immediately to PNG for its nation building and in great numbers
are its women.
It is time we celebrated our women in our 32nd Independence. The
mind is lodged in the head and so for a time, as a nation, we
lived for and in the head, believing in and investing in the
menfolk who were the head of our families.
It is time we thought more of and with our hearts. Through such
a shift, we might find a more caring, peace loving and committed
nation.
 
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