The saying, 'it is woman time' now, is getting more popular these days. Women have been featuring in the United States presidential elections, and the world looks on.

Here in Jamaica, we had our recent experience with a woman prevailing. Portia Simpson Miller staved off challenges from her male counterparts, medical doctor Karl Blythe, and Peter Phillips and Omar Davies, who both have doctorates, to be elected party leader and prime minister.

If it is 'woman time' now, what should men do? Is it time for us to take a back seat and enjoy the ride, or should we assert ourselves and demand our God-given right to be leaders as we are naturally endowed with the capacity to be?

We all need to understand that although we are socialised to perform leadership roles, especially where there is danger, as the well-known maxim dictates, ladies first, except when there is danger, leadership is not a gender issue.

Save ourselves

We have some great leaders, male and female, so what should we do as men? We need to begin by being honest to ourselves. Some of us would rather to be led than to lead; while others of us would rather lead than be led.

Women are no different from men in this regard.

My brothers, it is 'man time' now more than ever. Some of us declared, in a Gleaner-sponsored men's conference in September, that we were man enough for these times.

We will have to prove ourselves to ourselves, our families, our communities and the wider society. We have to be man enough to save ourselves from depression and unproductive, expensive, life-threatening habits such as drinking, smoking, womanising and all forms of overindulgence.

There are some popular myths that we should forget. For example, a paunch is a sign of affluence and the more women we have, the more attractive we become, both to our peers and other women. Women and money go hand in hand. A word to the wise: a fool and his money are soon parted.

It is time for men to be wise and not be lured into debt by greedy women, who want to have everything that they see other women with. Never mind being called mean and worthless when you don't give in to the whims and fancies of women who think that their sole purpose on Earth is to entrap unsuspecting men.

It is high time for honest men to dissociate themselves from those who have no respect for life. We cannot afford to follow the popular saying, 'see and blind, hear and deaf'. How many more of our children can we afford to lose to the murderous and callous among us?

Public pronouncements

Brothers, it is our time to stop sending mixed messages to our children, by privately supporting lewd, violent and vulgar lyrics at home, while we make public pronouncements about the harm that lewdness, violence and vulgarity do to our society and the impact that they have on young, impressionable minds. Our children learn more from what we do than what we say.

It is time for men to stand up for what they believe in. We cannot afford to be wimps and lackeys, saying yes to salve our egos and to look good while our consciences give us no peace. We will pay the price of our silence on matters that we should be speaking out against. This is not a call for us to be martyrs. It is a call for us to understand that it is man time now more than ever.

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