B-METRO COMMENT: Leta��s continue fighting for women empowerment

The world marked International Womena��s Day on Wednesday.A� It was not an ordinary day.A� It was not just another day.A� It was a day infused with purpose, with drive, with passion to swing power balance to better reflect the worlda��s demographics while also ensuring a balance of scales in terms of values of equality and fairness that we have over the years so vainly espoused. A�

It is still a long road, a painful journey towards achieving some modicum of equality since as we mark the womena��s day, more than half of the women population have probably not even heard of the day. While there are battles to scale the corporate ladder by countless women, there are many more still to unshackle themselves from slavery around the world, millions being trafficked across borders for profit.

Indian actress Madhuri Dixit, in her famous quote, puts it aptly: a�?Women need to be empowered through the strongest tool a�� education. They dona��t need to be subservient to anyone, but at the same time, men must change their mindset towards women. If they are more respectful towards them, then things will change at the grassroots level. It will happen slowly, but everyone has to move together.a�?

Zimbabwe prides itself as being one of those countries where girls and boys have been afforded an opportunity to get an education.A� However, in spite of such opportunities, cultural and religious beliefs still hold back some girl children with some communities still preferring to send the boys to school over the girls. It is also in such communities that child marriages are rife, since after dropping out of school, the girl children seek security in marriage or are encouraged to marry to escape poverty.A� It is such cycles that we need to break so that we have more women accessing an education and therefore being aware of their rights, a development that would help them later in life as they advocate for better opportunities and as they fight for the inclusion of more women in decision making.

The theme for this year, a�?Be bold for changea�?, which encourages women to be bold enough to drive the change that is required to improve their lot by fighting for equal opportunities with men, can only make sense to those that are already empowered to a certain extent. The economic disenfranchisement of women that makes many of them dependent on men has made the fight for gender equality quite challenging, leaving each generation hoping that the next would take it a notch higher.

We applaud various Government programmes meant to empower women either through giving them a voice in political discourse or through financial help for their projects. We have also noted that curriculum review could also be crucial to inculcate the right values from childhood and hence create a more equal future society.A� Also worth mentioning is the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) initiative that has enabled many girl children to venture into the science and technology field without undue influence from their prejudiced parents, some of whom do not believe in girl children taking up science subjects.

While the womena��s day is largely a day for reflection and recharging as we face the future, areas of concern remain; violence against women, unequal employment opportunities, poor access to education and vulnerability to natural disasters. We believe the recent floods, while they affected whole communities, women bore the brunt more than men.A� It is in this light that in designing intervention programmes in communities, issues of gender equality and equal access need to be brought to the fore.A� As we look ahead to another year, another decade, indeed another century, let us stay the course in fighting for the full assertion of human rights by all, since the fight for womena��s rights is a fight for human rights. . .