'If you educate a man you educate one person, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family' - A beautiful saying that is often mentioned in various articles, prints, etc.
Upon reading the statement carefully, I realised that it actually bore what some could regard as a sexist remark. I only say this because I remember telling my female colleagues that my wifes duty to raise the kids is superior to her other pursuits such as her career (which by the way, is fine in its own right!), and I was cast out as a sexist pig! :rolleye LOL.
So anyway, I googled around a little and found this excerpt:
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“Educate a man, you only educate one person, but educate a woman, you educate the whole nation”.
"It shows that if a woman is educated or becomes of a good moral standard, her behaviour or quality will be contagious on the other members of the society as they have that endowed charm to influence others. Thus, it will be disastrous for the society if women behave carelessly and recklessly like their male counterpart. "
From a research paper titled "A Syntactic and Semiotic Analysis of Some Yoruba Sexist Proverbs in English Translation: Need for Gender Balance" by A. A. Asiyanbola
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Now here are my questions to you:
a) Is it true that to imply that women are more responsible for raising a family than the husband, is in fact, sexist? The saying seems to imply that men are not duty bound to guide their family as much as their female counterparts are!
b) Secondly and just as interestingly; if indeed to educate a woman is to educate (and guide) a nation, then does the inverse also hold true that if the nation is misguided, then it is the fault of the woman for not having fulfilled her responsibility to educate/guide the nation? Does this mean that the woman is expected to fulfil a higher standard of morality, as compared to her male counterparts?
How do you reconcile the message of the saying (which is indeed positive) with the potentially sexist implications of the message? Food for thought!
