The place of women is in the kitchen.

The world is confused. While the men have become weaklings, many content with waking up to bottles of drinks; the women have realized that there’s a power beyond them, or that has been hidden from them for so long, and they are doing all they can to reach for it. Everytime and everywhere, you hear about women emancipation, gender equity and in fact ‘women first’. However, when a snake appears, the men must go first.

When the robbers bang at the door, the men must take the lead. And foolishly, many men would always say ‘YES’ to whatever the women say, however confused they may perpetually be even at their own detriment.

The world was recently made to laugh by the words of an anonymous writer, “If women were to rule countries, there will be no wars. Only a set of jealous countries not talking to each other.” This is yet to be a reality as much as making it so obvious, but you find such a scenarios play out on a daily basis. Tight-fisted, almost shut-eyed, women demand for the rights or privileges that have hitherto been the exclusive preserve of the men. They get it and they intend to keep it for themselves and other women coming behind them. How? That is where the problem starts and continue….

We must admit that a handful of the ladies who get to rule do quite well at it, sometimes even better than the men who have ruled in the same capacity before them. Usually, what do we get? Misplacement of personality and priorities lie at the bottom of such episodes of women emancipation and gender equity.

While there’s general empathy for the ultimate aim of such moves, the disaster that is the outcome is generally felt nationwide and globally in the nosedive of previously held standard of values. The ladies have largely left the kitchens and the comfort of their husbands’ or parents’ houses, where bunches of brooms, grinding stones, mortars and pestles and omo riogun (stirrers), have all gone on holidays from the hands of our ladies, who now proudly wield writing pens, suitcases, stethoscopes, prescription sheets and the engineering tools as symbols of the emancipated woman.

As developmental as that may be, it is all at the expense of what truly constitutes a home and her viable contents. Children now realize their real homes are far from the ones inhabited only at nights along with their parents but the crèches and school classrooms, where they get to spend the most parts of their days. That may be important and not really our business.

That quintessential woman rolled in Ankara wrappers, or well, in modern times a pair of shorts and whatever manner of t-shirts she can find, but busy sweating it out in the kitchen pounding yam, making ogbono soup, washing plates, cleaning and all that makes a home-savvy woman is dead, with the exception of a few.

The business of that few is our concern, although she may be castigated for being foolish, illiterate-educated and giving more than necessary to men, who are deemed undeserving of such services. That few still hold the key to a man’s heart. By man, we do not mean the irresponsible ones whose hearts are seared and impervious to any external stimulus however preponderant that may be; not those who are capable of finding that unimaginable heart to beat her up or treat such a woman with no regard.

The ideal is that any ‘man’ will respect, fear and defer always to such a woman. He is drunk, gets home late, staggers into the house and the first thing he notices is the ‘delicious’ aroma rising from ‘most definitely’ the kitchen (not the other, meeting a corporate work-fatigued woman slumped in a sofa, asleep or seeing one of those lengthy seasonal movies like Full Housewives, with the maid busy in the kitchen attempting to make, if so lucky, poundo-yam, spaghetti, indomie and the apparition of what can be called soup).

Our drunk man manages to stagger along the trail of the aroma leading to the kitchen and on getting there, finds his wife, fully returned from whatever work she must have gone to do for the day, making the best meal, the umpteenth time, for a hubby whose status of responsibility is not in the equation of her choice to or not to do what she’s supposed to do as a woman. That’s where the power of the lady lies.

Howeever, it may be argued, especially by those who’ll rather excuse themselves from this arduous task, that their power derives from how much nagging and sexual deprivation they are able to mete out to their yet-to-be-convicted irresponsible men. How brilliant of modernity woman. Only time will tell.

All things being equal, we meet on the other side of time to count the cost of our decisions. Reactions from ladies? Nag it out….