Gender Equality in Amilcar Cabral’s Policy for Youth Education

Abstract

The author deploys conceptual analysis, historical research and exegesis to argue that the reverse discrimination policy Cabral adopts by modifying, downwards, laid down criteria for school admission to favour girls against boys is contrary to enshrined principles of equality of all citizens, as participants in revolutionary praxis, anchored on combatants’ avowal of Party ideology. He contends that this unsolicited favour shields women from competition with boys to prove their intellectual capability and connotes a wrong presumption of adequate knowledge of women’s abilities by Cabral, thereby committing him, albeit unwittingly, to reverse paternalism, a hallmark of patriarchy. The justification for these arguments is that, basically, discrimination of any type based on natural endowments, commits naturalistic fallacy, especially as it was found out that women on their own, without revolutionary props can successfully contend and compete intellectually with their male counterparts. The author concludes that Cabral’s reverse discrimination policy is wrong from the vantage point of logic, fairness, morality, theoretical consistency, and fidelity to enshrined principles of natural and civic rights of all concerned. The best antidote to patriarchy and its traditional paternalism is an egalitarian society in which women demonstrate their abilities in competitive engagements with their male counterparts from which the females garner their deserved respect.