Moesha Boduong, following her comments in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour has come under backlash back home in Ghana. The social media influencer was a guest on Amanpour's "Sex & Love Around the World" and was asked questions pertaining to her otherwise unusual affair with a married man.
In the interview, she blantantly asserted that the economy of Ghana has limited women and that the only way to get by as a woman is by having or being in a relationship with a man who can take care of you (wealthy man), whether married or not.
The shock on Amanpour's face as Moesha described how a woman can't make it in Ghana was the same expression I had. My thought was...
How is she feeling so confident trashing literally the efforts of Ghanaian women, without even flinching?
Social media has been buzzing over the night and Moesha is trending at #1 on Twitter. Like any issue, there are two sides. The ones you think her statements were wrong and others who think she was telling the "hard truth"
According to the second group, she said what most Ghanaians are usually afraid to say. I had an encounter with another person who believed that the system never favoured women and so Moesha's statements can be justified.
In the first place, what Moesha said wasn't the "hard truth" neither is it entirely a lie. To be fair to her it was her truth, her experience. Which country can proudly say they don't have such women, who think "body over hardwork"? My problem with her statement is the way she made it look like it's the order of the day in Ghana. This narrative is exactly the reason some women are fighting, fighting systems to prove people wrong; that women can make it to the top without sexual intercourse or any related activities. She just attempted to use a not-so-thought-through sentence to stain our hardworking women.
Despite the fact that our cultural sytems don't treat women equally, the economy isn't gender bias. The economy affects everyone regardless of your sex and therefore that assertion in my opinion is wrong. Women are not the only ones having it rough in this economy, men are too.
I for one am not here to judge or blast her for her means of getting money. If that's all she can do to get money, that's her problem, not mine but to try and drag every other Ghanaian woman into this widely despised means, then that's the problem.
I'm for women empowerment but you can't empower one who doesn't want to be, one who thinks she can't override a system that is gradually but slowly breaking to encapsulate everyone, one who believes it's only a man that can make her live in power because in the end we all have choices. However in your man-dependent life, don't drag others into it and make it look like it's a general happening.
Most Ghanaian women don't"sex" their way to the top. Its a narrative carefully orchestrated and absurdly propagated by both men and women who just can't and don't believe in the abilities of a woman and that's appalling.
Here's my opinion on the Moesha Boudong interview. What do you think? Write it down in the comments
Photo credit: Trendy Sturvs Blog
4 Comments
I agree with and disagree with some aspects of your blog but these are my opinions so here goes:
ReplyDelete-you said the economy affects everyone and that's absolutely true but I believe women have the higher disadvantage. From the start women are told to seek lesser paying/less intimidating jobs so as not to "emasculate" their future spouses, they are told to hand over control of financial issues to their fathers or husbands (whoever society has deemed appropriate at that point) and made to feel like issues regarding finance and economics are "men's talk". Therefore there is barely any actual knowledge on how to handle these things for most of us. Furthermore usually even getting decent paying jobs and financial opportunities is way harder for the Ghanaian woman unless the person holding all the cards thinks she has something else to offer and let's face it, it's usually sex. How then can you say there's equal opportunity for men and women to make it in the Ghanaian economy?
I was actually talking about the brunt of the ailing economy, not opportunities, in a sense that the economic hardship affects us one way or the other, though not in the same measure but it's not gender specific. The economy here is specific to financial state of the country, not in terms of opportunities, nor institutions or system.
DeleteYou also stated that the women sleeping to get to the top issue is orchestrated and propagated by people who don't believe in a woman's capabilities but it is something that currently happens in Ghana, we know it, it's not a lie. What you maybe meant was that some people use that to discredit the successes of women who didn't actually use that route and thus disregard her personal effort and struggles, believing that a woman's only way to the top rests on the shoulders of men and sex.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree with you here. Guess I was emotionally caught up there. Certainly there are some women who got there through sex. I meant to say exactly what typed in this comment. Thanks for your correction and drawing my attention to that
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