WHEN will journalists realize that, when they report a burglary, it’s not necessary to write the gender of the criminals? How many major and minor crimes are committed by women? The recent story about P50,000 stolen at dawn from a parish in Tabunok declared that it was carried out by three “male” burglars who climbed over the church’s locked gate, slid down the church window and ransacked the place and made off with the funds they found there.
How often do we read about women engaging in criminal acts? Quite rarely, if you think about it. Lately there was a report about three Muslim women nabbed in the south who were suspected of carrying explosives under their flowing robes. Now and then there are stories about females in some countries who stab their erring partners or husbands to death. Brave women everywhere have been known to stand up for their rights in the face of the male hierarchy.
In this country there is Janet Lim Napoles, the notorious embezzler involved in the 2013 pork barrel scam. She amassed so much money, she could be ranked among those criminals like Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies.
I’ll always remember the time I lived years ago in Bangkok when I learned of a woman cutting off the penis of her sleeping husband. I vaguely recall that doctors tried to stitch it back on, with little success. Thai men were known for being excessively macho, but from that time on I believe many men realized that women are the stronger sex.
All those cases displayed a wide female imagination, something not attributed to most males. This must be because males have simple brains that concentrate mainly on murder and robbery and getting drunk, while females have more complicated and sophisticated minds which dream up elaborate schemes, which makes many of us admire them.
Sadly, there are just a few outstanding women heads of state around the world like Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinta Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai In-wen, Ukraine’s Yulia Timoshenko, Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Switzerland’s Simonetta Sommaruga, Croatia’s Kolinda Grabar-Kilaravich and a few others.
Someone once asked why it is that so few women around the world enter politics and the answer was that most women really can’t be bothered to pursue that profession because it’s too much trouble putting make-up on two faces every day!