In Kenya, women have made tremendous gains through acquisation of higher learning and many hold managerial positions in top organizations. The Government also introduced a development fund specifically for women entrepreneurs to obtain funds to start businesses. Further, the new constitution launched in 2010 has also made provisions for gender inclusivity (two thirds) in all public appointments. Even though it has not been easy to implement, there have been some observable gains. Furthermore, a lot of parents are urging their female children to acquire education and get good jobs. However, there is still a lot to be done especially where cultural orientations are concerned especially gender socialization beginning at the family level, school and within religion.

In Nigeria, women are gaining more higher degree, certifications and holding management positions in top organizations. It is the wish for most parents to see their female child achieve quality education and get good jobs. Yet we still have some men who wants, and some force their wives to be full time traditional house wives. This has to do with the foundation of the women, how they were brought up, religion and peer group.

Thank you very much, dear Flourish_Itulua-Abumere for this important contribution, concerning the situation in Nigeria. It is an encouraging sign, the world is in a cultural breakthrough, I think, also in gender questions, towards justice, balance and compensation, this gives some hope, despite the many setbacks.

To Ashkan Latifi: I am very thankful to hear something about the situation in Iran. That traditional roles which over centuries, so narrow were connected with religion let me understand that change can't come within some decades. Nevertheless such changes are in the looming in your answer. Writer, artists, professional filmmakers take care to describe the everyday life and the ideas for more fairness grow, so that - it seems to me - surface and roots of life are in an process of gradual change. The worldwide influence of the media and the possibilities of communication play a role.

Thank you for both comments, kind regards, Hein

In Kenya, women have made tremendous gains through acquisation of higher learning and many hold managerial positions in top organizations. The Government also introduced a development fund specifically for women entrepreneurs to obtain funds to start businesses. Further, the new constitution launched in 2010 has also made provisions for gender inclusivity (two thirds) in all public appointments. Even though it has not been easy to implement, there have been some observable gains. Furthermore, a lot of parents are urging their female children to acquire education and get good jobs. However, there is still a lot to be done especially where cultural orientations are concerned especially gender socialization beginning at the family level, school and within religion.

Thank you, Bernard Ndonga for your information about Kenya, I think your information is important because perhaps it is not so widely known what you reports about the boost in Education with girls in Kenya. Is this current movement limited to one ore several ethnic group (religion may be play a role, I think, for educational motivation regarding traditional role of women in society) or seems it to be a general tendency? - To Peter Griepink: Thanks for your note, I have collected similar experiences with mixed relations with female educational carreers. But I am narrow bound with the phenomenon that a high-educated female student made her examinations at university and then decides: I will have many children - with the idea to found a highly self-determined, also ecological interested family, an own republic, and I was impressed how such idea became reality in a good manner, but in this single case it was a women-dominated republic because there were more female than male children, today they are all adults with own children, using the experiences of their own childhood.

Dear Hein,

Thank you for this question. We can also find opportunity to know about the situation of women all around the World.

I believe law and regulations are one of the basic requirements to start to change the tradition.

In Turkey, ‘the situation changed dramatically with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 when a series of political and legal reforms were undertaken by M. Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues to build a modern, secular state in Turkey. The Republican reforms brought radical changes to the status and conditions of women in the country to an extent unprecedented and unmatched to date in any Muslim country in the world. The creation of a secular state, the first-ever in a Muslim country made it possible to pass legislation that recognized women as equal and free citizens vis-a-vis the state, and revolutionized family law. For instance, in 1926, the introduction of the Turkish Civil Code banned polygamy and granted women equal rights in matters of divorce and child custody. Turkish women were also granted suffrage rights first in local elections in 1930, then in national elections in 1934.’

Reference: Conditions and Rights by Gender and Women’s Studies Programme Middle East Technical University

But ofcourse law is not enough for the change. In modern Turkey most of the working women have to work harder than their husbands for both their ‘traditional’ roles at home and ‘modern’ roles at work. On the other hand men are becoming more and more ‘capable‘ of ‘helping’ at home!

The ongoing burdens of procreation are a central problem of any partnership or marriage; if these burdens are shared as co-creators and partners, a win/win situation can emerge. Personally, I would never encourage a girl or young women (e.g. my daughter) to take up the traditional role of mother, housewife, etc. Value priorities should be education , profession (vocation) and learning; economic dependencies and unpaid labor (win/lose model) should be avoided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_economics

The rapdly modernizing and urbanizing world needs new models of family economics and social innovations, with respect to marriage, the family and role models.

It is true for rural set up. In urban areas the situation is different. Most of the husbands want to have a working wife with the idea to support their children in a best possible way.

In rural areas almost 90% are house wives. In urban areas the percentage may be about 60%. I will not use the term "forced traditional" I will prefer to use "traditional" only.

Ferhan Kuyucak Sengur

I see, this thread is one year old and the last followers didn't geht an answer, sorry, but now a new interest exists so that I discovered the last reactions. -

I find that very remarkable: you said that men and women in the workplace are modern and at home rather traditional. I think it has changed much more in the last decades in the workplace in the modern economy of the IT society than in the family. On the other hand one should not underestimate the penetration of new constellations into the traditional roles in family life, even if this shows itself faster in the cities than in the countryside.

This includes the worldwide known phenomenon that women are more interested in self-determined lifestyles than they were 50 years ago.

This is reflected above all in a greater interest in education. This new interest in education, which is also encouraged by the higher educational requirements of the modern workplace. Within Europe this has developed extremely positively. Women are the winners of the education offensive of modern society.

This in turn changes their role in the family. The need to find a balance between professional career and family leads to greater role flexibility - and of course the role of men and their expectations about women's "duties" towards themselves have also entered a new stage. Men also take on activities that may have been part of the traditional role of women in the past. But this is certainly regionally different and there will be a city/country difference.

Nafees Mohammad

Thank you for your comment. It is a confirmation of the fact that in uban areas the changes are stronger regarding the roles in family live and female life plans. The male expectation of the working wife in urban areas does'nt happen without a willingness to rethink one's own role at home through stronger support of the woman, I think.

Stephen I. Ternyik

Thank you, Stephen, for your detailed contribution. You wrote: "The rapdly modernizing and urbanizing world needs new models of family economics and social innovations, with respect to marriage, the family and role models." - I only can support your thought without limitations. I can see in my family that role of the female part has more that the female share of highly qualified work has also increased in the family. The greater independence of the woman also correlates with higher education, which she did not have before.

In general, women play different role models in the globalized communities. Nowadays, women are active participants in different socioeconomic, educational, and political arenas.However, women are essentially the pillar of families and their traditional contributions cannot be denied. Therefore, motherhood, housewife duties, and running homes do not contradict women's inalienable rights to engage in intellectual, economic, and political activities. Despite existing prejudices in certain societies, women are moving forward and nothing can slacken that movement.

Yes, this is common in Africa. Nigeria is an example where girls less than 18years are forced into early marriage common in the northern Nigeria.

It is really child abuse. The parents are the brain behind this undesirable custom.

Good contributions

Yes, forced marriage against the girls' wish.

I agree with @Oluwaseun A. Otekunrin

Following!

I think it is right to take its role in practical, political or economic life

Excerpt from one of my recent articles (in French) published in a Tunisian daily entitled "The march towards gender equality in Tunisia: from fathers feminism to state feminism":

First part link: http://www.lapresse.tn/component/nationals/?task=article&id=160477

Second part link:

http://www.lapresse.tn/component/nationals/?task=article&id=160552

Third part link: http://www.lapresse.tn/component/nationals/?task=article&id=160651

"In Tunisia, the issue of women emancipation has already been at the center of the concerns and debates of Tunisian reformers of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus, one of the first measures of independent Tunisia was to restore the woman in her rights by granting her the status of a full citizen with the promulgation by Habib Bourguiba, first president of Tunisian state, of personal status code on August 13, 1956, barely three months after independence proclamation. This code was at the vanguard compared with well-established mental structures and traditions and represented more than a bold reform, it was at the time a spectacular action that President Bourguiba historical legitimacy and moral authority have achieved. Thus, the constitution, promulgated in 1959, stipulated that all citizens, men and women, are equal before the law. It has made possible the birth of numerous decrees that have allowed, among other things, women's access to education, just like men. Since 1956, the Personal Status Code has put Tunisia on the path of a new choice of society in which women occupy an important place.

In order to make acceptable the new legal code, Bourguiba relied on an enlightened reading of Islam and on women and therefore did not proceed by force or imposed a civil code imported from the West.

Tunisia's success in the field of the advancement of women is based on a bundle of interactions between many factors. Among the most important factors, we should mention:

- the reform of the legal framework and the evolution of the judiciary,

- the very rapid progress of girls' enrollment in all stages of education, from primary to higher education,

- the wide spread of birth control, as early as 1961, before several European countries, and the rapid and significant decline in the fertility rate,

- the growth of salaried employment which employs many women,

- the openness to universal culture,

- the development of women's associations,

- the growing percentage of women in politics,

- the determination of Tunisian leaders in front of of religious obscurantism. "

Depends on s country: the more traditional (and less developed?) country, the higher the pressure.

Reza Biria

Thank you for your detailed contribution and also for the last sentence. That confirms my assessment.

Mirna Leko-Šimić

Many thanks for your remark. Indeed, there are differences between countries and cultures.

Oum Kalthoum Ben Hassine

I am very grateful for the comments that have been made, not least because you have done a great deal of research on this subject. I will also be happy to study the links in the next few days. Thank you very much.

Luay Abdulwahid Shihab

Thank you for your advice, which encourages many women. I see that you also have very interesting projects.

Oluwaseun A. Otekunrin

I think that in the context of this topic, your note is very important that in Nigeria and certainly in other African countries, it is still common for families to marry young girls, regardless of whether the girls agree with the partner and the marriage. Thank you!

Carine Temegne Nono

Thanks for your interest. What's your experience with the question? This would be interesting.

Mala Babagana Gutti

If you like you may say something of your personal experience with question in your social environment.

Bernard Ndonga Your first answer was very stimulating, thanks for this, we have a new discussion now. Greetings H.