Nairobi, March 30 -- To conclude this year's Women's Month of March, a reflection on women and power. I want to revisit the fact that some people in my polity debated the titles used for the Commander-in-Chief of the Tanzanian Armed Forces in Kiswahili because they insisted on getting hung up on obscure rules of grammar that have never applied in the country before.

Imagine how deeply one must fear a situation to try and come up with new vocabulary for a job simply because a woman occupies it. It is rarely a good thing when this happens.

I stumbled upon a lecture by the British historian Ronald Hutton about ancient goddesses of sex and war. Or, as he likes to soften it for delicate sensibilities, "love and violence".

It was very instru...