"My former boss's attitude toward women is not unique.
I had a conversation with a gentleman here in Nigeria who said women in positions of power always become over-bearing, whereas men know how to handle leadership and success with humility.
"It gets to their heads," he said of women in management roles.
Looking back, I realize that my experience at that New York City-based media company was not atypical. I wrote this piece "It Happened To Me" bolstered by the courage I summoned immediately after reading a blog post a few days ago (read here) entitled "The White Savior Industrial Complex & Sexual Harassment of African Female Aid Workers" by Lesley Agams. Agams vividly describes an assault by a male colleague while working as the Nigeria country director for the renown Oxfam GB. After the assault, the man in question handed her a contract termination letter. Many of my fellow women have confided in me, sharing harrowing real-life tales of near-rape incidents in the workplace, cases where they were told to sleep with the boss to get a promotion, and aggressive intimidation by male supervisors.
And it's not only the overtly patriarchal, "man-is-the-head" types who are committing this abuse.
It's also the hash-tagging, progressive, left-winged liberals garbed in trendy activist attire: thick soled boots and dashikis, plaid button-downs and worn blue jeans with worn sneakers, or cropped blazers over cotton shirts without neckties. These activists are too often propped up in a righteous spotlight. They march on as darlings of the revolution, unexamined. Their act-ivism is unstoppable… their acts, unstoppable.
I met one of these young self-titled human rights activist types. He was among those arrested for protesting during the 2012 Occupy Nigeria rallies. This guy picks and chooses his causes and apparently the advancement of women is not one of them. In his mind, women's rights are not important enough. After I voiced my opposition to his foul groping and leering sexual advances on me, he told me "women's rights are not human rights.""
- Chika Odua
Read the rest here...
- Ikhide
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