{"id":1535,"date":"2015-03-31T15:47:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T14:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writehouse.org\/?p=1535"},"modified":"2015-03-31T15:47:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T14:47:48","slug":"miss-or-mrs-whats-the-courts-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/miss-or-mrs-whats-the-courts-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss or Mrs- What’s the court’s business?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever I appear in court, I proudly announce myself as \u201cChinua Asuzu, [usually] for the Defendant.\u201d I am visibly male, and extremely proud of it. The judge, observing my maleness etched on my rugged face, jots my name down as \u201cMr<\/em><\/strong> Chinua Asuzu.\u201d Knowing this, I smile in silent gratitude for the judge\u2019s graciousness. I never introduce myself to the court as Mr<\/em>. The judge respectfully assigns the title to me. Unknown to many Nigerian Alhajis, Ambassadors, Architects, Barristers, Chiefs, Doctors, Engineers, Pharmacists, and Professors<\/em>, \u201cMr\u201d is a title of high respect and honour for gentlemen. The judge puts this title in front of my name. I am a man of respect. I am a gentleman.<\/p>\n

The title Mr <\/em>does not indicate my marital status\u2014only my gender, and the fact that I am deemed worthy of respect by the honourable judge. The judge is not interested in my marital status. He couldn\u2019t care less. He respects me whether I\u2019m married or single, no matter my age. He\u2019s just waiting to hear whether I\u2019ll talk cool law or hot air. <\/p>\n

But when a female colleague announces herself as, say, \u201cFatima Bala,\u201d the judge retorts, as if a fatal omission had been made: \u201cMiss or Mrs?\u201d If she\u2019s single and on the \u201cwrong\u201d side of 40, the lady would then confess in an apologetic whisper: \u201cMiss,\u201d as if being single was comparable to leprosy, or as if the title of Miss was a matter of intense personal shame. <\/p>\n

Female lawyers are supposed to announce their court appearances with a clear and loud indication of their marital statuses summed up in the title Miss<\/em> or Mrs<\/em>, for example, \u201cNkechi Olajide (MRS)\u201d or \u201cMRS Nkechi Olajide\u201d. When they are married, they shout the title: MRS<\/em>; when they are single and mature, they whisper \u2026 miss<\/em> \u2026 as if something is amiss with Miss<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Nothing is amiss with Miss<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Whether a lawyer, male or female, is married should not be the concern of any court or judge. But if it must be, then courts and judges should be interested not only in the marital statuses of female attorneys but also in those of males. <\/p>\n

Ms<\/em> (pronounced Miz<\/em>) should do for women what Mr<\/em> does for men: as married and single men use Mr<\/em>, so married and single women should adopt Ms.<\/em> Women all over the world should reject any discriminatory or unjustifiably differential treatment in forms of address. Ms is a woman\u2019s best and smartest title. <\/p>\n

As in other phases of gender issues, women are often their own worst enemies. Why must you advertise your marital status on your business card and in other business and social contexts when your men don\u2019t announce theirs? Men introduce themselves as, say, Jonathan, or Mr Goodluck, while women scream Mrs Abiola. Women should demand and expect respect on their own footings as individual human persons and not as appendages to some man. <\/p>\n

The egregious discrimination built into the judicial inquiry about female lawyers\u2019 marital statuses is a subtle and nuanced assault on the spirit of section 42(1) of the Nigerian Constitution and articles 3 and 18(3) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples\u2019 Rights. These statutory provisions and treaty obligations frown severely on any species of discrimination, no matter how disguised, against women.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now, Ms Okorodudu, what were you saying about the case of Heaven v Pender<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever I appear in court, I proudly announce myself as \u201cChinua Asuzu, [usually] for the Defendant.\u201d I am visibly male, and extremely proud of it. The judge, observing my maleness etched on my rugged face, jots my name down as \u201cMr Chinua Asuzu.\u201d Knowing this, I smile in silent gratitude for the judge\u2019s graciousness. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[174,134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-march-2015-edition","category-the-write-partner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehouseng.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}