When did our brothers become our parents?

by Bee Gill

One thing I’ve never really understood about the way many of us were raised is how our brothers somehow became the people who could tell us what we could and couldn’t do. Nobody voted for them. Nobody questioned it. Yet so many girls grew up knowing that a brother’s opinion could carry just as much weight as a parent’s.

It all came down to one thing…izzat.

The family’s honour was believed to rest on the shoulders of its daughters. If a girl stepped out of line, people didn’t just judge her. They judged her parents, her brothers and the family name. Somewhere along the way, boys were made to feel responsible for protecting something that was never theirs to control in the first place.

My mother-in-law often tells the story of how she was pulled out of school by her younger brother. She laughs as she remembers it, which is probably the saddest part of the story. At the time she had finally been given the chance to learn to read and write, something she absolutely loved. Then one day her younger brother told their father she wouldn’t be going back to school. That was it. No discussion. No asking her what she wanted. Her education ended because a boy decided it should.

Her brother has long since passed away and she’s now 95. I don’t think she’s ever really stopped to consider that one decision changed the entire course of her life. She laughs because that’s how she remembers it. We look back and see something very different.

Not long ago another mother proudly told me that when her daughter turned eighteen they bought her a beautiful gold chain. Before she could even enjoy wearing it, her younger brother told her to take it off because she wasn’t allowed to wear it. What struck me wasn’t just that he felt entitled to make that decision. It was the proud smile on his mother’s face as she told the story, as though this was exactly how things should be.

How did we reach a point where boys were given authority over girls simply because they were boys? Why were daughters expected to accept instructions from brothers who were often younger than them, with no more wisdom, experience or understanding of life?

I’m not blaming brothers. Most were simply repeating what they’d seen. They were raised to believe it was their duty to keep their sisters in line because the family’s reputation rested on them. That burden was handed to them by the generation before.

But imagine being the girl in that situation. Being told what you could wear, where you could go, who you could speak to or whether you could continue your education, not by your parents but by another child.

For many women, that wasn’t protection. It was control, dressed up as responsibility.

I know not every family was like this, and thankfully many aren’t today. But if this was your experience, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. The question is, why did we ever think this was normal?