Today March 8, 2018 as we celebrate International Women’s Day, we launch our #FROM THE SHADOWS campaign to encourage women to rise to their full potentials and not fade into the background as the male-dominated society will like them to.
Women have fought to achieve equal rights in many parts of Africa. But as in other continents, due to the fact that the world comprises largely patriarchal societies, it has become a reality that equality takes time.
For example:
- Where women undertake paid work, there is often a wage gap between their earnings and those of men.
- In certain sectors, women face barriers to joining trade unions or doing business as self-employed individuals.
- It is often the case that traditionally women have fewer, if any, rights of inheritance. This leads to difficulties accessing land or finance.
- In certain societies, women are traditionally regarded as responsible for the home, including the care of children, the sick and the elderly. Household chores can be a huge burden, limiting a woman’s ability to take on paid employment.
- In addition, with poor access to childcare facilities or health and support services in many regions, caring for family members can take up a lot of a woman’s time.
- In rural settings especially, women frequently have a high amount of work, including tending family farms, fetching water and gathering firewood from a fair distance from their homes.
- Though many governments are committed to providing equal education for girls, in practice girls are more likely to drop out of school than boys. There is the tendency of poor families to spend available money (needed for school fees or the costs of books and uniforms) on the education of boys, because males are viewed as the future breadwinners and the girls are expected to carry out domestic and household chores, and eventually get married. There is also pressure in some cultures for girls to marry young, particularly where they are seen as an economic burden on families.
The list of discriminatory woes can go on and on, but the above gives some sense of the difficulties women face. This is what informs our #FROM THE SHADOWS campaign which kicks off today.
If you have a story of how you overcame challenges in life which you want to share to encourage other women, we would love to interview you as part of this campaign. If you have an opinion you want to express or a story you want to narrate in writing, we would be happy to publish it. Please send an email to info@pridemagazineng.com with the subject – “Shadows”.