Humankind must combat gender inequality united
Editorial Cartoon
The most salient include coordinating global and national efforts to integrate gender equality and women’s empowerment into poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery, and environment and sustainable development.
As UNDP would put it, the aim is “to ensure that women have a real voice in all governance institutions, from the judiciary to the civil service, as well as in the private sector and civil society, so they can participate equally with men in public dialogue and decision-making and influence the decisions that will determine the future of their families and countries”.
What role or goal would nobler and therefore worth engaging resources at the disposal of humankind? Who would question or doubt the relevance of helping a group of poor rural women determined to establish a centre offering training in the production of goods – as was once done in Ghana and the products have since been exported around the world?
The efforts have also seen some 1,000 villages in a second African country access enough energy to generate electricity for lighting, pump water from wells, de-husk crops and charge phone batteries, substantially improving the lot of women, children and the larger population.
President Jakaya Kikwete shed instructive light on the challenges the need for the realisation of women’s empowerment poses when he addressed a just-ended meeting in New York discussing ways to ensure women participate more effectively in efforts to develop agriculture and enhance food safety.
The president explained that women in developing countries deserve a much bigger say in agriculture than they now have because it is a sector in which they play an especially noticeable and effective role.
More precisely, he underscored the need for the respective countries to make comprehensive amendments to their laws and policies, with a view to attaching greater recognition of the involvement of women in agriculture.
Among other things, the changes would seek to enable women legally own land, qualify for loans from banks and other financial institutions and be more eligible for education and training opportunities meant to transform them into more productive players in the sector.
That is as it should it should be because, as former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan once argued: “When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given a better start in life.”
Investing in innovative development projects focusing the plight of women at the grassroots level is without doubt putting expertise, funds, time and other resources to a worthy cause and merits unqualified support.
The World Bank’s Gender and Development Group says in a report revolving around the MDGs that gender inequality tends to lower the productivity of labour and the efficiency of labour allocation in households and the economy, intensifying the unequal distribution of resources.
We concur because, indeed, gender inequality ultimately translates into lack of security, opportunity and empowerment, effectively frustrating development and poverty reduction efforts. It is thus an enemy of the entire society, and not only women.
