"Women go home, we have a meeting!" (Dealing with patriarchy)

In my early days in Gbaukuchi village as a part time missionary, I noticed the way a member of the congregation would suddenly stand up and inform me that there should be a meeting after the church service. However, one thing that bothered me was the exclusion of women in those meetings. The men would promptly dismiss the women after benediction while only the men would wait for the meetings. I disliked this totally and I thought of how to change it. Trivial as it may sound but it required wisdom. Gbaukuchi people are very patriarchal people. Women are respected but are mostly relegated in decision making. When I knew this issue should be handled with care was a time the women were singing and they had no one to play instruments to their songs while they all danced forward to give their thanksgiving offering. I told one of the men to help them play the drums to their songs and he looked at me scornfully. I calmly repeated my message and he told me point blank that he would not drum to women’s songs. Then it became clear. It was a sign of weakness to do such. A man must always be in charge and give directions to women. It’s the men that should make the decisions in any gathering (church inclusive). No one wants to be tagged “woman wrapper”. This is not Biblical. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” Galatians 2:28.

After one of the Sunday services, I told the women to wait behind for prayers. I led them into prayers for their spouses, children, and themselves after which I told them to sit down for a meeting. I discussed the issue of the church building project with them and asked for suggestions. They were a bit taken back with the questions but I encouraged them to speak. They offered lots of suggestions which we deliberated on. The women agreed that they would fetch water and gather sand for the building project while the men should render free labor services for the project. That meant we would only hire skilled masons. This arrangement would cut our cost by almost half, as most of the cost would be for core building materials i.e cement and blocks. Next Sunday, I met with the men and I told them of the wonderful advice given by the women. Since all of them were excited about building the permanent structure for the church (we had been worshipping under a shed with a make-shift roof that leaked anytime it rained) they welcomed the idea with open hearts. I called another meeting of everybody (men, women, boys and girls) to plan how the arrangement would work. During the meeting, I kept asking questions and the men would answer. I would redirect the question in another manner to the women. Any suggestion, offered by the women, I would re-emphasize and end by saying “wonderful! Clap for Jesus”. I asked the women when they would start gathering the sand and fetching the water and they said the next day. I told the men to look for two masons and dropped money to buy the blocks. Out of excitement, everybody had forgotten women were not supposed to be at the meeting. I informed them that we would all meet the following Sunday to review how far the building project had gone. We kept meeting and I deliberately kept asking the both genders for advice and giving them tasks but I gave the bigger tasks to the men. As long as the building was project on-going, we all met, planned together, reviewed plans together and deliberated together. It has been three years since we were able to achieve this in togetherness. Women now talk freely during our meetings, the men have accepted this and nobody remembers a time when the men would say “women, go home, we have a meeting…”