When women didn't eat eggs, wear trousers... Posted By : Charles Onyango-Obbo
To mark International Women's Day last week, East African newspapers had stories about "women of steel," "top most influential" women, "women achievers," and other stories like that. I am drawn to an earlier period when the only things women could be was pioneers; and the first this or first that. In parts of Uganda, for example, even as late as the early 1970s women were forbidden to eat chicken and eggs. So when we were kids we used to hear stories, told with horror, about the first woman to eat eggs. To this day, in many parts of Africa, women are still not allowed to ride bicycles. It is considered an abomination and a subversion of female virtue. Now, if in the 1950s and 60s you had a home where the girls ate eggs and also rode bicycles, only a mad young man would seek a wife from there. One of Africa's pioneer feminists and "communist" was Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a fierce freedom fighter. Hers is a most fascinating story. She beca...