IT would seem the traditional male and female roles are interchanging.
The media has of late been awash with reports of husbands, fathers and boyfriends making a beeline to the courts seeking financial upkeep from their wives, spouses and girlfriends.
Last week this newspaper reported a classic case of a Bulawayo man who took his wife of 10 years to court demanding maintenance of $200 per month for his upkeep and that of the couple’s three children.
Calisto Mapfumo made the application before Bulawayo provincial magistrate Victor Mpofu against his wife Charity Chitsa. The couple was customarily married.
In his application, Mapfumo said Chitsa deserted him eight months ago and did not contribute to the upkeep of the children. He told the court that Chitsa told him that she would never live with the children because they were his.
Chitsa, who is employed at a bakery, proposed to pay $20 per month for the upkeep of their three children, but was ordered by the courts to fork out $60 a month despite protestations the man would “drink” the maintenance away.
This latest episode from the maintenance courts gives credence to assertions by feminists that women have gradually transcended conventional gender roles, excelling outside the traditional domestic sphere and becoming economically capacitated outside the incomes of their husbands which affords them more choice in terms of deciding whether or not they stay in marriages that do not fulfil them or with husbands who are abusive or negligent.
Added to their increased capacity to create wealth, women are more likely to save rather than be lavish with their income, meaning they would be better placed to save to buy assets or have disposable income.
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While they may have more income generating capacity, most women still defer to traditional gender roles in relation of who should bear the primary or sole responsibility of financially and materially providing for their children hence some men who may be struggling financially may feel they need help and claim for maintenance because they are struggling — times are hard and economic hardships are changing breadwinner dynamics in fundamental and rapid ways.
Men are claiming maintenance because some of them are genuinely struggling to make ends meet and are married to women or have children with women of better financial means.
Others are doing it as a way of shaming and fixing the women who have spurned them so that they could frame these women as bad mothers who desert their children and don’t care about their wellbeing.
