#WM2024

As women, the world became accustomed to misrepresenting, misinterpreting, misunderstanding and ignoring only recently. Our history as humanity shows us that this was not our way millenia ago. Taking a leaf from the book of Genesis , let's go to the beginning.

The father of humanity was unable to find enjoyment in heaven itself until he had a companion, a woman. She became his confidant, friend and mother of their children. Thus woman played pivotal role in writing the very history of mankind.

We see evidence of the elevation of the status of women through the history of great kingdoms like the Ottoman empire and the great conquest of Salahuddeen. Women were scholars, teachers and warriors. We participated in war expeditions as far back as during the lifetime of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad peace be upon him. So one may ask, when did all this warped notion of women start, this great effort to deny our very existence unless it is absolutely necessary? Or it fits some commercial gain.

Even right here in Africa we know that the driving force of Nelson Mandela's resistance was his wife, Winnie Mandela. We also know the great efforts and contributions of visionary women like Funmi Ransome Kuti, Hajiya Ladi Kwali, the fierce Aba market women who fought the colonisers for their very right to sell goods. So I say with certainty, this relegation of women we see today is a modern virus, we weren't so diseased before.

I put forward that it began at the start of the 19th to 20th century. Their came a shift in the dynamics of family life and hence, the world. With movements like the suffragette demanding women's rights in Europe, other unforseen side effects followed the noble deed.

The large scale exploitation of women in work places, like the Radium Girls who coated wrist watches with radium for the army only to get deathly sick from radiation poisoning. From that came the world trying desperately to self correct, to fix the issue, it ensure it never happens again.

Therefore the world sought to bury this issue and all those like it. If a man gets injured in the job, he is compensated. When it's a woman, the world says 'what was she doing out anyway?'

The pain we have endured, the victories we have won and the change we have brought forth, all swept away so that the world would not have to face the reality of injustices that have been wrought on women.

Thankfully though, women are rebels. Keeping us down and unseen is exceedingly difficult. Why? We we not born that way. We have great icons like Zaynab Alkali, Buchi Emecheta, and to name one of the greats, Agatha Christie, who blazed a path for the rest of us to follow.

So to answer the question, who writes our story? We do. Only we can. Nobody can write a story that accurately captures the real struggle it is to navigate the world as a woman except a woman. The things we carry, the burdens that weigh us down and the pain, nausea and fatigue that accompany our cycles. Only a woman can write such a transformative work, works like Joys Of Motherhood, Virtuous Woman, The Stillbirth. These a works about women, by women, for women. More of them are needed.

So we write our stories. Like the rebel, pioneer, visionaries that we are. That will help to turn the tide around. Perhaps even bring about the type of scientific renaissance that Madame Marie Curie actualized in her time.

We tell our stories because no one else will do justice to it.