At my birth, some rejoiced, others frowned!
Why was a male child not born?
What use is the babe if she won’t bear our name?
Why invest at all in her only to be owned by another?
So I was left to tend the goats at home!
By some stroke of luck I found a ray of hope!
To also go to school like all the boys at home!
My presumed fragile frame didn’t affect my brain,
As sitting at the top, I Graced the hall of Fame!
Why waste your funds on her and wed her to another?
Oh let her hands be idle, she’s born to make a home!
Don’t bring her to the table unless the meal to serve,
If at all she must speak, it gas to be my will!
In fabrics of denial I was decked and set aside
Only to be showcased like a potter’s work of Art!
Who bearing deep thoughts and wisdom cannot itself express.
We seat with smiling faces but bleeding from our veins!
As seasons turned to seasons we found our sense of reasoning,
That we were made a She, an equal with a He!
Not to uproot the powers bestowed on them by nature,
But to steer with them our home like ship to shore!
We may seem weak by nature but our strengths defile the odds!
Too many times we’ve proven our worth with sweat and blood!
We birth just more than babies, as ideas rule the world!
Please let us take the stools that God reserved for us!
The day we mark this morn is not an aberration!
For we have been empowered right from our creation.
Don’t turn in our direction your weapons and amunitions,
Except you wish to question the Father of Creation!
We have a lot of scars from various jabs and stabs!
Some from right behind us, or just within our arms!
But still we rise like stars undaunted by the dark!
For God has made us so to bathe the trail in light!
I chose to challenge the bias that underestimates the intellectual prowess and productive capacity of women that limits their full participation in leadership positions and nation’s building.
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY TO ALL THE BEAUTIFUL STRONG WOMEN IN THE WORLD!
TRACY ONABIS.
#BreaktheBias#IWD2022
