Between Marrying Educated and Uneducated Women
Written by Odimegwu Onwumere
The Nigerian women are empresses and princesses. The question of the class of spinsters to marry in Nigeria by the cathedral of the teaming Nigerian bachelors has become a serious issue that needs urgent attention and solution. Many young men prefer to have a spouse from the folk of the High School leavers, while some preferred having their spouse from the Higher School leavers, while others are just attracted by the qaulities they needed in a woman irrepective of her technical education background. Many men are nipped in the head when they see a lady who is morally built, while others believe in the theory of any-woman-can-go as far as the woman is financially muscled. To this set of bachelors, they see the spinsters who do not have job as liability to them, while many other bachelors are afraid to marry a successful woman for the fear that she would lack respect and cordination in the house if she is married.
To marry educated or uneducated women has become a problem in the minds of many, and many men contemplate this: it is an issue of reality and logic. Many men are afraid to get an educated wife because from what they have experienced from many married educated women against their hubbies, they don't want a governor to dominate them. One man in a response to an article said, "I don’t want to marry an educated girl because they make relationships with more than 100 guys, perhaps sitting closely in the company of a handsome one, talking, smiling and exchanging love letters and stories of infatuation."
Undoubtedly, there are many Nigerian educated girls wanton in both morals and values. Not even only the girls, many married Nigerian women are immorally capacitated. They are ever ready to do anything immorally with a man to collect money or to enjoy the sweetest forbidden fruit. Imagine where young women and old women are imitating bad models of fashion, which include wearing of makeup that make them look like arch-sex workers, deceitfully becoming conceit in both dogmatism and dogma. Suffice it that such young women and old women imagine themselves as being ontop of the world. Who can sincerely urge both educated and uneducated young girls and old Nigerian women to attempt to look carefully at their modus-operandi. It is the bad behaviours perceieved among the educated married women that is blocking the road for the unmarried women that is making marriage very hard for the spinsters. Educated ladies are ever carrying the world upon their shoulders, and this virtue they reflect make many men to look them from far. Many married educated women can't really be wives. Like one writer posited, "I don’t because such types know nothing of the responsibilities and duties of marriage except chewing gum and licking a lollipop." The writer went further, "The long and short of it is that although educated women often are considered victims of misunderstanding by some young men and the misbehavior of some wanton young women."
An abstract from Washington, D.C., International Center for Research on Women, 1984 Apr. 29 p., said: Stated policies for women and the priorities voiced by poor women in the 3rd world demand interventions that will expand their economic opportunities. However, most income-generation projects for women "misbehave" -- that is, their productive objectives evolve into welfare action during implemention. While traditional views of women's place in society can influence the design of welfare projects, they fail to explain why projects assume welfare features in their execution when they have production-oriented goals. This paper seeks to understand the misbehavior of women's projects by identifying factors in the environment and characteristics of projects rather than in the motives of project planners. In the project environment, welfare approaches prevail because welfare-oriented action is perceived to have low anticipated costs. Since welfare action works only with women and operates in sex-segregated environments, the expectation is that it will be appropriate to poor women in developing countries, will not impinge on poor men, and will not take scarce development resources away from other programs (directed at men). To understand these anticipated costs, the paper examines contrasting woman-centered (or feminist) and family-centered ideologies that influece development action for women. It distinguishes poverty- and equity-oriented variants of the woman-centered ideology. Welfare action is also conditioned in the project environment by the limited range of institutions available to execute programs for women in the 3rd world. This limitation is traced to the separate development of economic growth institutions, relief agencies, and women's organizations after World War II. The paper outlines and typology of institutions that implement projects for women and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of women-only institutions. It then presents specific project characteristics that act as obstacles to or facilitate the successful implementation of productive designs. Obstacles identified include a preference for stereotypical female tasks and the misjudgment that these tasks are simple and transferable to poor women, the use of volunteer staff to implement projects, participatory activities that require low-income women to volunteer their time and labor, and the monopolizable aspects of production-oriented schemes. Projects are more likely to be successfully implemenented, the paper argues, if they use paid staff, pay poor women beneficiaries to participate, and involve innovative, nonstereotypical productive tasks. Finally, the paper offers suggestions for ways to reverse this welfare orientation and increase projects' success in expanding employment and income-generation opportunities for poor women. It proposes useful roles for women-only agencies in research, policy, and advocacy but argues that the implementation of projects should be done by integrated agencies.
In a yahoo group chat, a lady had this opinion: My marriage to the village idiot lasted only a year, most of which was torture having him around. I lost all respect for him... every bit. I couldn't take him seriously, and I didn't value his opinion. I ended up feeling like I had married beneath me and finally told him that I didn't love him. While another said: The sex better be enough to overcome the awkward conversations later on. It's best to marry someone that you can hold a conversation with, and usually that happens with people of the same intellect. Problems can arise if one feels superior/inferior to the other due to their intelligence. Another said: Nothing is "bound" to happen. If two people treat each other with respect, then there won't be any problems. If either one resents the other for their level of education (or lack thereof), then that will show up in the marriage. It's not the difference in education that's the issue, it's how each person looks at it. I have a master's degree. My fiance has an associate's degree. Because we respect each others' basic intelligence and contributions to the relationship, it doesn't matter a lick that I went to school longer than he did. I'm a better student, but he has other skills that more than balance that out. In the big picture of the world, having been a better student isn't all that important. I make twice as money as he does, but again, we don't look on our paychecks as a measure of our value in the relationship, so it's not an issue. In fact, he's enjoying the nicer lifestyle that my salary provides, not resenting it.
While the arguement lasted, a fellow threw another: Marriage is not about education levels, I have more education background than my husband, by far, however, he has taught me more life skills and common knowledge than I would ever hope to pass on to our child. In a marriage, my advice is to learn from one another, work together to help each other, and take every discussion seriously. You might be surprised as to how much you can learn from someone that is less educated. I can not even begin to tell you how much I learn each day from my son that is ten and has challenging learning disabilities, one being that he is partially Mute. I truly believe that you can learn something from everyone, no matter their education level. Best of luck to the Couple!
Odimegwu Onwumere
is the Founder of Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Oyigbo, Rivers State. 08032552855. apoet_25@yahoo.com
