Femi LazarusCEO at Femi Lazarus Consulting

Some beliefs were inherited and some patterns were accepted without question.

21 Apr 2026 · 2 min

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1:52

In this excerpt from a YouTube podcast, speakers discuss how Togolese cultural norms pressure women to keep marital problems, especially abuse, private. A personal anecdote illustrates that families deliberately avoid providing independent housing for daughters, fearing they might return home after marital conflict. Consequently, women have no safe place to flee to, leading to prolonged trauma, severe domestic violence, and even deaths. The conversation highlights the systemic reinforcement of abuse when abusers know victims lack alternatives, and critiques the failure of family structures to serve as protective spaces.

Chapters

For the average Togolese, when you go through difficulties in your marriage, you are not allowed to talk about it. Are you serious? No, we were brought up to keep it in. You are a woman, you can take it, so you take it all in. So we see a lot of women that are broken from trauma, from wounds. Even if when the man is beating the woman, When a man is beating the woman, you can't even go to your parents. No way! If you do, pack your bags. Let me tell you a funny story. When we were younger, my dad— my mom, she was very industrious. She wanted so much. So she would tell my dad, I'm tired of renting. I want to build our own home. I have the money. Why can't I build? And my dad would say, just in case our daughters have issues in their marriage and come home, they will have a place. So for us not to have a place for them, let's keep renting. Yes, let's keep renting so that when they go through issues and violence in their marriage, they don't come back.
What, what should happen to them?
You stay. And we've seen many die. We've seen many beaten to death. Maybe not friends, but family is supposed to be a safe place. But you can't even go back. So most of the people, women you see in Togo, they're broken. They're traumatized. They're going through it, but they can't talk about it.
And something happens when an abuser sees that the girl has nowhere to go back.
That's their strength. And that's what happens.
Declassified Podcast is now streaming on YouTube and Spotify.