I have been engaged in many arguments about feminism, a women agitation for equal treatment, but I had never been so altruistic and passionate about it until last week, when my female neighbour, Chidinma elevated the discussion to somewhat an academic level.

She started with the popular saying among womenfolk that ‘what a man can do, a woman can do even better.’ She argued that even though men would always contest this mantra, events around the world are beginning to clothe it with the garb of truth.

In spite of  my strong conviction that it was wrong for women to abandon their traditional role of motherhood for mannish   jobs, I was made to realise that the socio-economic realities of the 21st century and the churlish, chest-beating bravado of men have made it compellingly imperative for women to rise to high heavens.

Chidinma was right. In a climate that is dominated by men, male chauvinism always carries a tinge of masculinity, and even sometimes resonates in chest-beating machoism. It was as a result of this machoism that women took the fight for equality with men to Beijing, China in 1995. Even though their dream is still far from being realised, the Beijing conference, we must admit, was a pathos that gave women the right pep and encouragement needed to confront the tough world of win-win male chauvinism.

In developing countries like Nigeria where socio-economic climate is dominated by men and where middle class has become a more impregnable fortress, one can hardly blame women for their restlessness to be at par with their men counterparts.

A journalist, Barbara Ehrenreich recalled sometimes ago that in the good olden days, only men had to scale the impenetrable walls of professional middle class, with only fewer women drifting in on the strength of their mental abilities.

Today, the situation has changed. Virtually all women are career-minded. There is hardly any profession or career that is beyond the reach of women. We now have female engineers,  astronomers, gynaecologists, computer wizards, pilots, footballers, presidents and female professionals in every other human endeavour. These professions were once the prerogatives of men alone.

This feminine mystigue  is further exacerbated by the surely, proud attitude of men who are now interested in finding a partner who would not be a burden, but rather someone who could pull her own weight, as if they were selecting a companion for upstream rafting trip.

As  psychologist and men’s liberalism advocate, Herb Goldbers argued in the 1970s, if women were tired of being ‘sex objects’ for men, men were equally tired of being ‘success objects’ for women. In other words, a pairing  based on economics is now occurring, with higher income men and higher income   women tending to find each other.

With this projection, the question that will readily agitate many minds is, what becomes of the traditional role of women which is primarily child-bearing and child-care?

Good question one might say. But in a country like Nigeria where it is almost impossible for a man to solely shoulder the family responsibilities and where both sexes are looking for proven wage earners as partners, women may be left with no better option than to be career-minded.

One might also ask why women do not take up jobs that require less of their time so that they can pay adequate attention to their home-fronts. Again, the answer  goes thus: In a country where civil service job that requires less time is as scarce as American Dollar, and where the monthly take-home  can not take an average middle level manager home, resisting or quitting a time-consuming but well paid job may be a difficult option for women.

In this case, what should a woman with good, but time-consuming job do? Should she abandon her job and add to her husband’s misery? Or should she stay on the job at the expense of her home?

The question, I must say, stares us in the face and reverberates back to the state of our economy, in which case the womenfolk is left with no better option than to strike a balance between motherhood and career. How they intend to achieve this remains a one million naira question.

Boye Salau