“Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”
– Margaret Thatcher
Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, economist and banker, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and innovating the concept of microfinance and microcredit. By giving loans to the poor, he managed to help thousands break out of poverty. Soon after he started the bank in 1976 in Bangladesh, he made some important observations.
The first was that women who received loans used the money not only to generate income but to make the lives of their families healthier and better. As an example, some women bought chickens thus getting meat and eggs to feed the family. They generated income by selling the eggs and the chickens they raised. The men on the other hand, tended to use the loans for things that benefited only them – alcohol, gambling and personal luxuries.
He also noticed that women were more apt to repay their loans than the men. While the repayment rate for women was about 97%, the men repaid about 77% of the time.
Then was the observation that the woman in Bangladesh were an untapped pool of hard-working entrepreneurs who could turn the smallest opportunity into significant gains. The small loans seemed to really empower the women to reach for more.
These observations soon caused him to direct the bulk of his efforts towards women.
170 years before Muhammad Yunus won his Nobel Peace Prize, a woman named Harriet Wrigley, the wife of a Methodist missionary, must have known this too. That if you give women the smallest opportunity, they will build something great out of it. In a coastal town in the then Gold Coast (now Ghana), some 10,000 km from Bangladesh and 8000 km from her home in England, she started a school for young girls who most probably had no chance at ever receiving an education. She taught these girls housekeeping, religious education, writing and reading.
Mrs Wrigley would succumb to malaria a year later but in 1837, another missionary’s wife, Elizabeth Waldron, would take the girls under her care. Under her guidance, the brilliance of these girls would attract the attention of the Methodist Church. Using a core group of these girls being tutored in housekeeping, reading and writing, a secondary school was founded – Wesley Girls High School.
From these humble beginnings in 1836 has grown a secondary school for girls that occupies one of the premier spots in pre-university education in Ghana. A school that epitomizes what secondary education should be. A school that year after year occupies the top spot in most rankings. A school that over the years has produced women who have contributed immensely to Ghana’s slow but steady progress.
Wesley Girls High School! WeyGeyHey! Debu for us from Mfantsipim.
What is it about the female sex that allows them to make so much out of so little? What drives this wish to succeed and magnify? What is it about them that evokes such efforts to make the lives of those around them better even as they rise – their families, their friends and the community?
Maybe the answer lies in the time when humans were hunter-gatherers. The men hunted and the women stayed home and raised a family. If the men did not return , the women still had to raise those children. They developed a survival instinct that is unmatched. Or is it that extra X chromosome? Does it give them extra power? Or the ordeal of carrying a child for 9 months? Or is it the constant flux of progesterone ad estrogen waxing and waning? Maybe when God took that rib out of Adam, he took out the best rib!
Whatever the reason, the products of Wesley Girls, like the poor women of Bangladesh epitomize this amazing trait to the highest degree.
Mfantsipim and Wesley Girls have histories that started intertwining back in the 1880s. Not only have both schools supported each other but there exists a healthy rivalry between them too.
Being a product of Mfantsipim School, it is coded into my DNA to always take digs at anything and anyone Wesley Girls’. However, beneath all that wisecracking is a deep respect and admiration for the school and it’s products. I should know – I am married to one of them. My sister, cousin and several friends are products too.
They are smart and classy. They do not suffer fools at all. They are hard-wired with the ability to lead and are visionaries.To the world, they proffer an aloof and polished veneer which hides wonderful and caring hearts of gold. Their desire for independence and autonomy runs deep and this can often set them on a path of conflict, in a society as misogynistic as ours is.
So as they celebrate 180 years of educating girls, let’s all celebrate with them. Let’s celebrate the strength that allows a woman, in the words of the author Erick S. Gray, “…to make a baby out of a sperm, a home out of a house, a meal out of groceries, a heart out of a smile…”. Let’s celebrate perseverance, strength, family, love, wisdom, opportunity and the future.
Let’s celebrate the Woman.
Today let’s all Live Pure, Speak True, Right Wrong and Follow the King!