Women In Europe

By Yemi-D Prince and Yemi D. Ogunyemi

Women In Europe is the author's journalistic experience while he was working as a reporter in Europe in the 1980s. Thus the book is born out of his interviews he had with women in Europe, hoping that the African women could learn politically, economically and socially from experiences of women in Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diaspora Press of America
• Release date: Mar 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386072751

Yemi-D Prince

Former research fellow, Harvard University, Yemi D. Ogunyemi (also known as Yemi D. Prince) is a luminous fellow whose work reflects the savvies and radiance of his spirit, and always fascinated by books, letters and the power of words.

Book preview

WOMEN IN EUROPE 

FOREWORD  Along many generations, we have been accustomed to read books, meant to widen our horizons about foreign countries and continents. Generations of authors have supplied us with their adventurous impressions of distant continents, which were often fantasies, at best very subjective, coloured documentary reports which we uncritically consumed with little or no experience. Gigantic cultures of highest degree of excellence were sold to us as savage, unspeakable stereo-typed phrases about red men or about black continents were disseminated from generation to generation.

This special measure is the same in the present description of the roles played by women in Europe. The male reporters have remained inaccessible to their lifestyles, how much more to women, who they presumably could not at all communicate with. They only occupy themselves with writings about women's beauty. Whatever big shares from the cultural and economic advancement which the women of foreign cultures have had and still have, have often not been discussed till the present-day, with all the unpleasant aftermaths, in which the economic aid for the Third World are often misdirected and never meet the economic demands (men receive the means of production, women till the land etc.)

For generations, the notion held by men is that women belong to the nature, while men belong to culture. In other words, women are nature, representing motherhood and the earth. Men are culture, epitomizing the fruits as produced by women and the earth. The dichotomy may depict nature on one hand and culture on another hand, nonetheless, men and women depend on each other.

At first glance, Dr. Yemi D. Ogunyemi will surprise a European woman with his book at a first glance, but at second glance, he is just on a pleasant course. As an African, he has interviewed the women, and examined the position of women in different European countries in order to give his country folk and indeed all the African men and women, a useful information about the political, economic and social/cultural life-styles of the foreign continent—Europe.

The facts are comprehensively condensed. The book could serve as a standard reference for the development of women politics in our time.

The result which Dr. Ogunyemi derives from his personal observations and interviews, make a European woman to ask herself whether her directness is sometimes affected. It is still useful not to look into one's mirror always but to behold also the truth in the mirror from another angle of consideration.

Finally I will like to refer to a nice quote, which may be altogether very significant for these highly interesting research interviews and observations of bridging the gap between two different kinds of life-styles. About the Austrian women, Dr. Ogunyemi correspondingly writes: Many Austrian women sit in restaurants for hours because they do not know how to cook the way an African woman does her cooking.

I laughed because the Austrian women are invariably proud of their excellent cuisine and the art of cooking. During the course of my conversation with the author, we came sooner than expected to the real sense of his observation. What an African understands as cooking is not like ours—frying of veal or grilling of chickens: it includes a lot of difficulties, work experience—to prepare a meal for the whole family. It starts from the harvest of the cereal to the grinding of the pepper, onion, melon and other condiments, and the finishing preparation.

How this process compares itself with the sitting in restaurants is very easy to visualize. And for the women in Africa, the observation may be interpreted to mean that the European women spend hours upon hours in restaurants.

And this is why I see this book as a respectable result of an unusual attempt to document the lifestyles of European women. A trivial joke of mine is that we all could wish ourselves that there has never been any lovely misunderstanding between Africans and Europeans.

Dr. Eva Deissen—Editor/Journalist.

Kronen Zeitung, Vienna, 1986.

Women in Europe

Chapter One

The Genesis of Love

Between the four corners of the world, there are peoples, different peoples who under different geographical and climatic effects do things as they are conditioned by natural complexities. There are those who spend most of their lives under sunny skies. There are some who are checked in and checked out by downpours. Yet there are others who are orbited by temperate and cold regions, and freezing weathers.

In spite of these variations, the beauty of the world goes on in defiance of the atomic warfare and the unfortunate natural calamities.

Women in Europe unlike women in many parts of the globe are well trained, well-educated. Their training and education become more pronounced since the end of the Second World War. 

Since this book is directed principally to the African readers in search of information out of their reach, I try to unfold the lifestyles of women in Europe from the family point of views to their political, economic and cultural perspectives, classification, participation and ramifications.

The European women are different from their African counterparts. Also, the family structures and their inner effects are different from the African’s. The greatest abstract holding or pulling man and woman together in this world is love. Agreed.

This love plays a significant role regarding the behavioural attitudes of all the European women. No one can deny this. I have witnessed this myself—in the past and I am witnessing it today. Ten years of studies, ten years of working experience, ten years of observing women in Europe will surely give me, without placing my principles over expediencies, some inextinguishable knowledge about the European women.

Unlike the African women, the European women are very open with their