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…
Till next time…
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