Battle for gender equality still hot

In celebrating and marking the day, they congratulated themselves for achievements reached, efforts exerted to their cause and they also called upon individuals in authority to put women’s issues in the forefront and indeed to ensure that more and more women are in coveted positions of authority where they can shape the agenda and influence matters regarding fellow women.

It is a disturbing and unavoidable fact of life that women all across the globe are indisputably an underprivileged lot.

Here on our African continent, the problem is unfortunately even more acute, particularly because of our outdated, heavily biased and patriarchal African culture which essentially puts women down and indeed deprives them of certain basic rights and privileges which otherwise are given naturally and without the slightest hesitation to men.

It is no secret of course that a male child is still more valued and cherished than the female child.

Thus, a female child has sadly no rights to inherit property like land or indeed anything much else.

In many cases girls are discouraged from continuing with their education beyond primary school, that is, if they get that far.

The excuse usually trotted out in such cases is that a girl will end up getting married and henceforth is of no use to her parents.

This is unquestionably sad because there is an extremely important fact here that is often forgotten.

That fact is that an educated girl will prove to be very valuable to the family which she will go on to have.

She will take better care of her children and the general condition as well as wellbeing of her family will certainly tend to be good.

This includes the fact that she will also be able and be better equipped to plan her family than a girl who unfairly ends her education at only the primary school level.

All this surely demonstrates that authorities on the continent should have stringent, tough laws concerning girls’ education.

Indeed, any girl who is prevented from pursuing her education for whatever reason other than ability should be monitored so that the reason can be determined and thus removed.

If the problem is emanating from the parents then they should be swiftly and duly punished.

There should be a law which specifically targets parents who interfere with their daughters’ education.

This law should be well-publicized, especially in the rural areas where this condemnable iniquity against girls mainly occurs.

There are truly unbelievable happenings which take place where girls’ education is concerned: sometimes parents encourage their daughters to incredibly perform badly in their exams so that they can fail.

These parents are definitely devious. Their primary goal is to marry off these girls and take the bride price money.

Depressingly, they are more concerned with the bride price than their daughters’ education.

It would be a simply excellent idea if there could be a law to ban bride price outright.

After all, why should girls be for sale as if they were mere commodities or goods up for grabs?

Moreover, African leaders should be strongly reminded to appoint more women to previously unattainable positions of authority and influence.

This would enormously help girls too. Girls would have inspirational role models and the women occupying these exalted positions of authority would be able to influence policies concerning girls and women.

Encouragingly, we already have powerful women in Africa who have worked hard and performed wonderfully in their top, high-pressure positions – a few names readily come to mind: Ms. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf the President of Liberia, Ms. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Nigerian Minister for Finance and our very own Vice-President Ms. Samia Suluhu.

The admirable success of these women doubtlessly motivates our girls on the continent to work very hard and strive boldly to reach greater heights.

Indeed, our girls can believe that all they need to do is to remain in school for as long as their ability keeps them there.

Authorities on the continent should rapidly enact laws which are fair to women.

In addition, traditional practices which are cruel to women, victimize women or are anti-women should be discarded and done away with forthwith.

Above all, women who are fortunate enough to be in top-most seats of power need to remember that the battle for gender equality has not yet been definitively won.

As such, since they are in a position to shape policy regarding women, they should never forget that the struggle will only be over when there is absolutely no need whatsoever for there to be a battle in the first place.