Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 14/12/2025 11:02

Do women need men?

The question posed by Germaine Greer was slightly less provocative. She asked, do we really need men? Greer, a leading light of the feminist wave that started in the 1960s and author of The Female Eunuch, was writing in a British newspaper back in 2002. She believed then that if 99.9 per cent of men died, the human race would not become extinct. This was her calculation: The world’s men (in 2002) produced 200,000,000,000,000 sperm every second, whereas the world’s women produced only 400 eggs per second. When you factor in that a pregnancy lasts nine months, while a man’s sperm could impregnate any viable egg during that same period, we have more than enough sperm to make men redundant. Be that as it may, she concludes that women do not, in fact, want to live without men, even if they are surplus to requirements. Women still want their children to have fathers and to live in families. One has to wonder if those in charge also believe women do not really need men, when governments pack them off to war at the drop of a hat. And life carries on for families left behind to survive without them. Melvyn Bragg, the celebrated British author, has written a touching and revealing series of memoirs about Bragg family life after his father returned from WWII. In A Soldier’s Return, he describes witnessing his mother surrender control to his newcomer father– whom his childhood self resented as a usurper of his own relationship with her – to restore that senior male to his place as head of the family. Women simply had to revert to a state of apparent dependency. This is a deeply entrenched power balance that exists everywhere. World over, men migrate for seasonal work or as soldiers. Those who return from wars are often broken physically and mentally. It is not the time for them to feel redundant. Women must manage their crushed egos and enhance their sense of self-worth, despite ravaged bodies. It’s just as well that everyone can practise self-delusion to return to traditional role-playing. At the moment, there are umpteen wars and conflicts happening, and most of them involve uniquely male armies. That is not surprising, when male hierarchies are based on male-male conflict, although the use of sexual violence in warfare is reportedly becoming more commonplace. Violence against women used to be and may still be explained in part by the need for those men who have been humiliated by life and other men to be compensated by the submission of women and by exploiting that dominance, both physical and sexual, to rebuild their manhood. If a woman is not vulnerable and refuses to submit, it is easy to see where that might lead, if we accept that theory. The question about why women seem unable to escape abusive male partners if they are in relationships by choice popped into my head last week when the charity Coalition Against Domestic Violence (CADV) hosted a Christmas fundraiser in Port of Spain. No woman, regardless of her professional status, age, social class, religion or education, is beyond being subjected to domestic violence – physical or emotional – anywhere in the world. The answer to “Why?” is complicated. We were reminded about that when gathered at the event and Local Government Minister Khadijah Ameen recalled the recent murder of Romona Victor, UNC councillor and Heritage board member, by her husband, who then committed suicide. And as a male member of the gathering reminded us, men are also victims of domestic violence. We should not be surprised that societies are more prone to violence: apart from gross inequality, authoritarianism and militarism are as strong now as during most of the second part of the 20th century. Then the world essentially divided into those in the “free world” and those entrapped in the state ideology of repression. Particularly worrying is that authoritarianism is making a comeback under the banner of democracy in many countries that espouse freedom and citizens’ rights. By July 2025, 26 women in this country alone had died from domestic violence this year: that’s over four per month. The number has since increased and could rise further, since any seasonal drinking and merry-making (regardless of expense) is always conducive to family conflict and violent behaviour. The very instructive CADV 2024 Annual Report mentions two advocacy interventions undertaken by President Kangaloo’s office which seek to disrupt existing patterns of intimate partner violence: strategies such as the involvement of young people in the arts, music and reading; and engaging influential allies, including men, to become involved in empowerment and education. Public education must be ongoing, because experience does not change human behaviour. CADV works with victims and perpetrators of gender-based and domestic violence and abuse of children and elders. Call 624-0402 (day), 324-8606 (night) or visit: https://coalitionagainstdomesticviolence.org/ The post Do women need men? appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.