Towards Achieving Gender Equality and Empowerment

Towards Achieving Gender Equality and Empowerment

Gender equality and women’s empowerment has been the longest and largest notion of goals and is the third goal out of eight in the Millennium Development Goals. The importance of this goal is eliminating gender disparities, promoting women’s education and employment and political participation as effective ways of combating poverty, hunger and disease. This will require intense efforts to eliminate social barriers, gender stereotypes and promote equal rights.

Key action points

1.     Firstly, majority of poor women live in rural areas. They contribute enormously to the informal economy, agricultural production and are the managers of vital resources such as water. Women need to be given a higher status in their community and this can be done through an expansion in the land and property rights of women. As such, women become the managers and owners of their own wealth and can control their resources whilst training themselves for this skill set. This paves the way toward achieving gender equality.

2.     Secondly, policy makers need to implement the mainstreaming of gender issues into their agricultural and related policy

3.     More efforts need to promote the education of women and girls by providing grants or educational support, helping break down the social and cultural barriers. Therefore, the government and development groups need to encourage platforms that allow women access to parent classes and groups within communities.

4.     More women need to be educated around the benefits of family planning, as their commitments to their often-large families prevents them from working or going into education. The effects of HIV/AIDs on women and ways to prevent it needs to be widely addressed, especially in rural areas.

The fact that African population is set to double in 2050 (United Nations, 2017), the vast majority of that population are likely to be women. If policies are not adapted and local attitudes have not changed then there is a risk of limiting the economic development of African countries and further increasing poverty levels. Let’s hope we see more changes in the upcoming years….

This is the last blog in the series. I have always been interested in studying and understanding development in developing countries and towards achieving development. This module has proved pivotal in this and I hope you all have found my blog to be useful in understanding gender and water development in Africa.

Till next time…