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African Women Are The Key To Unlocking Africa’s Sustainable Development. by Nobody: 2:43pm On Mar 08, 2016 |
By Jennifer Uchendu
On this day, March 8th 2016, the world celebrates the
International Women’s Day. The world celebrates the
social, economic,cultural and political achievements of
women all over. The day also seeks to promote gender
equality and parity. It is also crucial to understand the
relationship between women and sustainable
Development, especially in Africa.
If Development involves meeting our present needs
without compromising the needs of the future generation.
The first time I heard the concept of sustainability, I
quickly imagined an African woman doing that perfectly,
maybe because African women do a great job at managing
poverty; by conserving money and food in the household
so that both children and husband get something, are
happy and satisfied and there’s almost always something
for the next day and the even the day after.
That being said, Sustainable Development has a lot to do
with gender inequality, A lot of people have always
attributed Sustainable Development to only the
Environmental part, By doing this, they oversee the other
two pillars of Sustainability – Economy and Society which
are very crucial when talks on Gender inequality comes up.
Giving the gender gap globally and more specifically, the
lack of education and extreme poverty most women face in
Africa, more focus is somehow given to the Environmental
and social aspects of Sustainable Development and
inadvertently ends up favouring men. This has been the
trend for a long time thus impeding the development of
women and hence that of mankind.
The work of improving the lives of women has honestly
been very inconsistent, In some Africa cultures today,
women are still considered as second class citizens, higher
grades of slaves, women are denied access to self
development, expression, freedom of bodily rights, and
paid lower in jobs (if they do get any) and scarcely ever
make it to management and leadership roles, someone
once argued that if women led most large companies in
Africa, we may not be too far behind on the development
Scale. So this lack of power therefore translates into a
bigger picture – Female Poverty.
Interestingly, for a continent like Africa, we find that an
endowed natural resourceful environment plus a resilient
population affords us an opportunity to achieve
Sustainable Development; but did you know that we are yet
to get here because our women, our precious African
women are responsible for 60 – 80% of food and water?
Yet have zero or limited assets to natural resources like
land, water supply and even ecological opportunities that
make life easier (forests, farmlands etc) According to
Human Development Report 2015, a survey was taken to
find out that African women had uneven access to Digital
Revolution (31%). Some Men boldly say that a married
woman does not necessarily really need to work, go to
school or even strive to pursue intellectual recognition, as
long as she would get married to a husband that can
provide enough for her. But what happens where that
husband can no longer provide? I would like to look at it
from the perspectives of our current employment systems
being so male fitted that women are rarely able to catch
up. As long as women keep bearing children and caring
for their households, they would always suffer from time
poverty and a lack of mobility, where they have to take
time off to give births while their male colleagues are
getting promoted. I dare say that companies need to revisit
this notion. Paternity leave is a nice idea too .
Most women currently in leadership positions are older
and are not as active as their younger selves would have
been. Women have serious issues when it comes to health
care access and reproductive rights. (FGM is a story for
another day).
There is however no doubt that the female presence is
growing now than it used to be before, to sustain this, we
need a better work/life balance to solve our economic
slump and Skewed Demographics
A Gender sensitive development strategy is therefore of
uttermost importance to achieve Sustainable Development;
that enhances the thought process of women, their
capabilities, respect and ability to compete for their rights
in terms of land, labour and product markets thus allowing
them to laudable contributions to the environment, society
and also the environment.
Today, we celebrate the women making their families
work, striving for excellence in their careers and
promoting Sustainable Development by just being women. credit : www.kleeqers.com |
Re: African Women Are The Key To Unlocking Africa’s Sustainable Development. by ibile1: 2:52pm On Mar 08, 2016 |
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