Interview With My Mother-In-Law

             I chose to interview my mother-in-law, Anisa, who is 54 years old and is from the older Somali generation. During this interview I asked her questions regarding limitations related to her gender and race that she experienced, her educational experiences, and her family choices and how her ethnicity and gender influenced her life choices. This interview was very interesting for me because not only was I able to compare and contrast the new generation of Somali women to the older generation but also from those Somali women who grew up in Somali compared to those who were raised in the United States. I asked her a simple question: “What impact did being a female have on your life during your generation?” Her reply was, “I had no rights or claim over my life. Our lives were predestined and every decision was put into practice in order to prepare us for married life. We were taught to obey our husband and submit to his every will and every decision had to go through him first.” She said where family choices were concerned the females had none; everything was decided by the men and this was because the men claimed that God made them the providers and gave them the power of authority over the family. While at one point I thought that this sort of inequality was happening mainly in Muslim countries I realize that this was happening in Western countries as well. This reminded me of the “Declaration of Sentiments” by Stanton Mott as she clearly speaks of all the rights taken away from women. Mott states,” He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead”; this is very much similar to what was going on during Anisa’s generation when women had almost no rights, especially after marriage.

            Also, Anisa said that from the beginning they raise women to believe that they are inferior, both physically and mentally, and dependent on men and this also is something that Mott mentions in her speech about the history of women in the West. Anisa believes that it is the woman’s duty to stay home and take care of the husband and children and that the men should go out and work and she is surprised as to how the world is changing as women nowadays go out to school and work instead of staying home to take care of their family. Anisa’s words were, “During our time a married lady who went out to work or school was considered loose and not a good mother or wife.” This is a great example of “doing gender” as Lorber puts it in “The Social Construction of Gender”. It shows how society decides what is normal for males and females and what makes a person either a “man” or a “woman”. Even though the world is not as it was before, this misconception that females have to be housewives in order to be good mothers and wives is still apparent, especially in many Muslim countries where change is slow and women are expected to submit to men.

            I asked Anisa another question, one concerning her education: “So mom did you attend school when you were young and if so what is your current level of education?” At this she laughed and said,” My child you know that women are not meant to go to school, after all what can school teach them that they do not already learn at home huh? A woman needs to stay at home and learn how to cook, clean, and take care of the house and family so that she can get married and take care of her own family, that is her greatest achievement.” I was surprised by this answer mainly because I did not expect her to think this way. Yes, it is true that I was aware that females had little education available to them; however, I did not know that many of them believed that education would not benefit them at all and they did not even desire it. In the “Declaration of Sentiments” Motts mentions the lack of education available to women and there were many cases of this situation mentioned in our readings, however, at least women in the West still craved education even if they did not have the resources available to them up until the Second Wave of feminism arose. To me this ties into “The Feminine Mystique” by Friedan as she explains how women’s lives were predestined by men to make them believe that they would be happy in their housewife roles and to seek anything beyond this would be considered abnormal. It seems that the women in Somalia were also brainwashed by both culture and religion to believe that they should be content being housewives and if this wasn’t enough to keep them happy then surely something must be wrong with them. This assignment made me realize that even Western countries were at one time like many Muslim countries that seem to oppress women and take away their rights, giving them no freedom and liberty.

Sources:

Anisa Mohamed:  AnisaMohamed03@gmail.com

Stanton Mott: The “Declaration of Sentiments” 

Judith Lorber: “The Social Construction of Gender”

Betty Friedan: “The Feminine Mystique”