My Second Book, Feminine Silence | Working Woman Wednesday {5}

Hey loves,

I’ve been gone for a minute. I hope you are doing fabulous. I’m alright. Getting there.

If you follow me on instagram and Facebook you know I recently finished writing my first book “By the End of Your Teens” and we are currently in the stages of publishing. Being a first time publisher, this is all new to me so I am taking it one step at a time. I have currently sent the book to about 10 of my closest friends for criticisms before I hand it over to the final editor. So far, so good.

Being done writing the first book, I have now had to decide which books I wanted to do next. I have approximately 10 book ideas (tends to happen when you live in your head 90% of the time lol). I am grateful to God for all the beautiful ideas. Ultimately I wanted to write the novel “Namwetu” next because inspiration is still there right now. However, given that I am trying to establish myself as a writer, I have opted to go with two other books “Feminine Silence” and “Conversations with my Future Husband” that are in no way alike but can be written at the same time. I will not be able to share any details about or content from the book “Conversations with my future Husband” until the right time, but I have opted to write “Feminine Silence” blogstyle. Yes I said Blog. Paying homage to what it originally was – a blog.

If you have followed me and my journey for a few years, you would know that my first blog was in fact called “Feminine Silence”. It was a feminist/writer blog I started to express some views I had about feminism when I was just a new born feminist. Ha.

I stopped blogging there and transferred to the style blog rockachique.com which later became chicredefined.com and currently a lifestyle blog – byntha.com. Talk about an identity crisis!

About Feminine Silence,

My opinions as a feminist have grown and changed over time. That has come from being faced by so many different scenarios and trying to see where I personally stand as a feminist.

Feminism by my definition is about giving women a level playing field in the corporate world and I in everyway stan for this. I also acknowledge that the topic of leadership comes in a lot where Feminism is concerned. Some will say Feminism is simply women trying to take over and dominate the world. Well alright!

I started writing Feminine Silence to sort of answer my own questions about what it means to be a female leader. Initially, I just wanted to be a leader. It did not matter to me how. So I started reading about what makes a good leader. I remember at times being told I cannot lead because I am a woman and women are too emotional to lead. I took those words as they were and tried to tone down my emotions to cater for the world I was living in.

Growing up, I fall in love more everyday with who I am as a woman. I appreciate all my traits of womanhood and I have recently started to notice that leadership and the world at large in a way says for us to be great at anything, we have to strip away our womanity to become more manlike to be truly seen as leaders and influential.

Now before I send across the wrong idea – this is not a book about “showing a woman her place in her home” or in the world at large. I have nothing against books that do that but that is not what this book is about.

This book is about embracing womanity, for both women looking to lead and men working with female leaders which is well – all men. It is about being great leaders as women without having to strip away our womanity or become more manlike.

The book has five sections namely:

1. Leadership and femininity

2. The Biology of a woman

3. Being a female leader

4. Leadership in the workplace

5. Leadership in the home

under each of these sections are 3 chapters so I am hoping that the book will have a total of 15 chapters in total.

In my stages of creation, I try my best to tap into something beyond me. I believe my words are Godgiven. I suspend my creations into the universe and let God do with them as he intends to. Sounds crazy but that works for me. There is some magic I feel in my work everytime I do that – something I can’t give credit to my human ability for.

The book starts the first chapter by defining leadership as a masculine phenomenon. It then discusses feministic principles where leadership is concerned and the first section ends with now accommodating leadership as a feminine thing.

But to be able to fully do that, one must understand the biology of a woman. We are Womb-men and that means that our whole lives,as are our monthly cycles, rotate around us having the ability to make life. Beautiful if you ask me.

This also means that we are full-time raging with undulating hormones and therefore always emotional. For the first time I am here to tell you that being emotional is okay. It is perfectly alright to be emotional and your emotions are not a weakness – if you learn to master them!

The next chapter talks about using your femininity as a leader and well that section would not be complete without dealing with a little sexual assault.

As female leaders, one of the thing that we, as Gender Researchers, use to measure Women Empowerment in society is “Decision Making power”. As a woman in the home or the office, do you have any rights to any decisions? That is what speaks for you as a leader. After understanding your decision making power, the next chapter goes to discuss personal development as a woman. Next step is to delve into sisterhood obviously, because we are amazing as individual women – but together we are unstoppable! It just seems like a really hard thing to do – women working together.

The last two sections discuss leadership in the workplace and leadership in the home.

The section on leadership in the home is quite dear to me for several reasons. I am one of those feminists that argues that feminism should not be brought into the home. I believe you and your partner should definitely view each other as equal in terms of overall capability, but much like what this book is preaching, I say that just because we are equally capable doesn’t mean that we are capable of the same things. I know I need my love to open my pickle jars for me because physically I am just incapable and I do not even want to try to be that strong. I also know I am a short woman and I rely on him to reach on the top shelf. That is my choice. It does not make me a weaker gender.

I am naturally a nurturer and I know that when we have children, I can never ask him to play the role of the mother in our children’s lives. In as much as he may be able and should be able to be there for them emotionally, he has a father role to play – a provider, a pillar and a protector something I may not fully be able to do as a woman.

I am aware these opinions may be unpopular to some feminists, but I hope when I am done writing the book I will be more clear about where I am going with all this.

I will start sharing contents from the book hopefully next week. I intend to share a chapter a week, God willing. I hope you enjoy it and I hope it will be helpful.