Unscrupulous as he was, writes Mabel Dove-Danquah of Ghana in her short story: The Torn Veil, Kwame Asante had a qualm as he looked at the woman sitting on the African stool near the bed. He had called her and yet when she came he did not quite know how to begin the conversation.

 “Akosua, how would you like fifty pounds to start a small business of your own -selling clothes or perfume and powder?”

The woman smiled nervously; ten years of married life had made her wary of her husband’s fits of generosity. Married under the Native Customary Law, a law which aids the man to gain his desire when it is at its fiercest but does in no way safeguard the position of the woman when the man's passion abates, she had served her lord and master with zeal and zest.

“Would you like fifty pounds?' asked Kwame again. I would make it a hundred; you have been a very good wife to me, Akosua.”

A cloth woman was all right when one was young and struggling, she could be so useful, a general servant, and yet a wife. He had just completed his two-storied building and had been made a committee member of an important club, received a coveted degree and been conferred an Associateship by his Academy. He had at last achieved his ambition and become an important man in the community.

“Er ....er   Akosua ...er, I want to tell you I am going to marry a lady; you will be paid off with a hundred pounds. Of course you can read and write but my friends will call you an illiterate woman.”

Akosua was extremely dispirited. She went back to her parental home where she died from stress. This reminds me of an experience I witnessed while teaching in Central Baringo, in Kenya’s Rift valley Province. It was common to find many girls in the lower classes but as the grades increased, the female population gradually reduced. One Wednesday morning, a parent stormed into my class and demanded for his daughter, for he had found a suitor for her, “a handsome old man.” I asked him whether he knew that education was important for his daughter.

“Mwalimu,” he began, “this is my daughter. Do I have to consult someone else before I pick my daughter?”

With tears augmenting her eyes, she followed the man of sorrows. She felt like a flower bud cut before it opened.

“Father, I want to learn. Oh Father, I’m not ripe for marriage. Father, can’t you be patient!?” She pleaded and sobbed.

“The time has come for reflection, review and appraisal of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (NFLS),” says Carla Sutherland of Ford Foundation. In the light of this, there will be a celebration of Kenya’s achievements for women on 28 July 2006, twenty one years after Nairobi played host to a historic event in 1985 in which 2000 government delegates and 1500 NGO representatives from 150 world nations, assembled for the UN Third World Conference for Women, dubbed the Nairobi Conference.

“The Nairobi conference was significant in that it provided an opportunity for women of the South to articulate their concerns and vision of the continent,” says Dr. Jacinta Muteshi of National Commission on Gender Development, “It reiterated that women are continually disadvantaged, discriminated against and treated unequally.”

“The Beijing meeting has to be used as a benchmark,” says Aseghedech Ghirmazion of Heinrich Boll Foundation.

“In the spirit of the Nairobi Meeting, women must have equal rights with men. African countries must change their laws to reflect on women as equal citizens. Women must participate in the political decision making process, be equally represented in parliamentary positions, job market and property ownership as their male counterparts. Their unpaid work such as caring and nurturing must be recognized, social responsibility shared and reproductive rights respected,” declares Dr. Jacinta.

The denial of legal rights, along with the force of tradition, once made virtual slaves of women. They couldn’t own property, enter professions or vote. Through the ages, this prejudice resulted in human tragedies, injuring the self image and mental health of those affected and depriving the human race half of the available but untapped human creativity.

A recent report by the Society for International Development (SID) entitled Pulling Apart: Striking Facts and Figures on Inequality in Kenya states that while inequality is a visible and significant phenomenon, it has an uncannily low profile in political policy and scholarly discourse.

Data from the Integrated Labour Force Survey, 1999 indicates that the lowest deciles for the male headed household accounted for 15% of total income while that of the female headed accounted for only 8%. The corresponding figure for the highest deciles are 4% for the male headed household and 12% for the female headed household. It also reveals that men have higher monthly income and participation rates in the job market, account for 70% of the formal employment and occupy high posts in the public service. Unemployment levels are higher among women (20%) than men (10%). In urban areas for example, there were 72,824 unemployed men aged between 20-24 years compared to 274,395 women of the same age.

In education, the 2003 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey showed that illiteracy among females is almost twice that of males by about 22% and 14% respectively. In politics, of the 44 women who stood for the 2002 parliamentary election, only 9 were voted in and of the 2043 elected councilors in the last election, only 97 ( about 5%of the total) are women.

These cumulative factors have made women to agitate for equality. As they do this however, they have to be wary of the means. How ironic that women have released themselves from bondage to their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons only to find themselves in bondage to the state. Abandoning the virtue of voluntary cooperation, they have become polarized into self seeking factions that clamor for the attention of an all powerful parent-the state.

To rectify past wrongs by turning to quick fix of discriminatory legislation is to flirt with totalitarianism. As Milton and Rose Friedman put it, “a society that puts equality in the sense of equality of outcome-ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.”

Affirmative action is the brandished fist that smacks too much of revenge. It stigmatizes women by sanctioning the law to the myth about women. It denies that women are able to compete on equal basis and therefore they must have an artificial advantage to make up for what they lack. It focuses on results rather than the equal right to compete. It demands that unqualified people be hired if they happen to be women while highly qualified candidates for jobs are rejected. In other words, it amounts to reverse discrimination.

How much better for women and men to unite in fight for freedom instead of fighting each other. Wise women and men perceive that to then extent to which we have become a collectivist society with inefficient and wasteful central planning, we are less free.

Three reasons account for the difference in personal wealth in a free society. They stem from the fact that people themselves are different from one another in countless ways. These are talent, industry and thrift. Some people have more talent than others .The task is finding which talent it is that other people will value and develop it to the fullest. Industry is the willingness to work. Some people are willing to work harder than the rest. Thrift is saving and investing rather than consuming everything now.

Economic freedom is the crux of the matter. Coupled with brains, hard work and determination, women will catch up. They will be tough enough to face discrimination with the dignity and courage of free people who know their own worth. They will know that the power of discrimination is lessened in a climate of freedom. They will know that we can’t all be leaders. If we equalized everybody’s earning tonight, we’d have inequality by morning.