Dr Emily God’spresence, a lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, may not have originally intended to confuse her audience in her choice of theme: “The Spear and Spindle: Should women fight?” at the third edition of her Being a woman workshop in Port Harcourt, not long ago.
Although participants spent time trying to capture the essence of this paradoxical metaphor, surprisingly, the university don carefully coupled the Spear and Spindle to clearly demonstrate the beauty of gender powers.
From her submission, the ‘Spear and Spindle’ are representatives of both genders. One principally serves as an instrument of productivity, care, growth and development, while the other; an object of confrontation, weapon of defence and destruction.
Obviously, the spear demonstrates masculine power, strength and authority while the spindle connotes feminine work and tenderness.
The holy scripture considers these two roles complimentary for a harmonious co-existence when it said “it is not good for a man to be alone, I will make him an help meet”.(KJV)
However, when the anticipated harmonious co-existence of both genders becomes far from reality, the need to look inward with a view to unraveling the leakage that has caused the center not to hold any longer becomes imperative.
Therefore, to say that the spear and spindle are tools of social equilibrium in attaining harmony in the family, in particular, and the society as a whole, is simply stating the obvious. The rising spate of social vices and delinquency in our society provides a platform where these two functions or forces could be tested for an effective result.
Although the Uniport teacher may not have consulted the gods before settling for such a theme, nothing else can be more appropriate in situating the nation’s need at the moment. Perhaps that could be her own way of expressing how abreast she is with the problem of the country and how to resolve it.
I think what is needed at this point of our nation-building isn’t a display of supremacy or sovereignty, but a romance of the two roles to be able to harness the best out of humanity and make the society a heaven on earth. This is possible when the spears and spindles play their distinctive roles, one for the protection of the family, the other for provision and nurturing of same.
The reason behind the necessity of the marriage of the spear and spindle is basically to unravel the beauty of gender powers and how such powers could be used at home, schools, workplace and every where, to achieve required result. It is not about using the spear to turn against those it is supposed to protect (women and children) and vice versa. A situation where one role becomes dominant and the other dormant can never enthrone the much desired social equilibrium.
When women are restricted to the family circuit, saddled with the responsibility of nurturing and caring without a father-figure, their milk of motherly tenderness may seem sappy to the wild child who would need the bones of masculine toughness to curb his excesses.
This, no doubt, may have provoked the don to say that “it has become imperative for the fathers’ presence to be felt by their sons, whose masculine strength may sometimes surpass motherly tender care.”
Conversely, women hold up the spindle or distaff as an instrument to cater for the home and society at large. It could also serve as a powerful instrument of warfare with which to fight or resist any form of oppression. Such fight is intended for the advancement of the family which, by extension, is also for the advancement of the society.
The choice of the Spear and Spindle simply explains the necessity of the combination of effort and ideas of different beings for a harmonious existence. It is not in doubt that God, in his infinite wisdom, has endowed the man and the woman with the requisite knowledge of attaining perfection.
The whole essence of making each party unique is to arouse in them a curiosity for companionship before a notable feat can be achieved. This is probably why the holy scripture queried “can two work, walk together except they agree?”
The burden of shaping the world via the conduct of humanity could be enormous on just one party should the other refuse to or fail to be actively involved. It is worse when the parties involved play their roles in negative perspective.
If life, they say, be a game played by the rules, then, there is a need for a positive use of the spear and the spindle; not as weapons of destruction to scare the children from their fatherly or motherly nest and threshold into the blood-soaked embrace of deviants, cultists, prostitutes and miscreants. They should rather serve for defence and the nurturing of the home-front.

Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi