Call Us Ms 3
1 2021-09-27T13:11:21+00:00 Alex Dryden bb5ccf4591af9a1e2b579ecc283a321fc7a7d87d 135 1 plain 2021-09-27T13:11:21+00:00 Alex Dryden bb5ccf4591af9a1e2b579ecc283a321fc7a7d87dThis page is referenced by:
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2021-09-27T13:11:21+00:00
"Call Us Ms."
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Published in Viva’s July 1979 issue, “Call Us Ms.” by Zarina Patel explores the relationship between language and perceptions of women in postcolonial Kenya. Patel, an author and activist, argues that the practices of infantilizing and marginalizing women are simultaneously perpetrated and reflected by the language with which they are enmeshed as “words have their basis in the factual realities of the community.”Patel's piece highlights the link between gendered language and matters of marriage and finance; with this link come gender roles derived from a history of female subordination in Kenyan society. Historian Audrey Wipper argues that “although considerable differences exist among the agricultural and nomadic tribes in the allocation of power, authority, and prestige, it is the men who clearly dominate the patrilineal, polygamous, kinship structure.” As Kenyan social practices were born out of, and passed on through, patriarchal rulings, so too has language reflected those rulings. “Call Us Ms.” considers the names pinned to women, or “girls,” and the ways in which those names present as innocuous, but actively undermine women’s autonomy.
In addressing finance, “Call Us Ms.” also observes the role of gendered language in the workplace of Kenyan women. Though Viva largely catered to the sentiments of an urban population, Patel exemplified the prevalence of sexism through the marginalized role of rural women in Kenyan agriculture, noting that “60-70% of our farmers in the country are women. Yet everywhere, including in the Ministry of Agriculture, the people use the male pronouns for the farmer and continue to thank the farmer for his contribution to the economy.” These contributions from female workers, coupled with semantic erasure of those contributions, speaks to the financial exclusion of women in this period. While women lacked control in handling finances within the home, they contributed significantly on the agricultural front and, in conjunction with their lack of financial inclusion, often went unpaid for the work on a familial basis. With the Kenyan economy relying most heavily on agriculture for its sustainment, and Kenyan women involved in 80% of all food production, women still had no access to such things as land titles or credit. “Call Us Ms.” speaks to how such exclusion reinforces the erasure of women in language, which in turn reinforces exclusion on the fronts of marriage and finance.