Gender Equality and Respect: where does Africa Stand?

By
Florence Mukanga

Culture is an important instrument of development but can also be a strong obstacle to development especially with regards to issues such as gender equality and respect for gender rights. It is crucial to explore the relations between culture and gender equality as gender relations shape culture or maybe it is the other way round. I am not really interested in debating this issue. My issue revolves around the manipulation of culture to create gender-based violence.

Cultural meanings given to women and men vary from society to society. It is an undeniable fact that traditionally in most African societies (at least in my own Shona Culture) women have had a lesser influence in decision making and less autonomy. This culture, though it did not endorse sexual violence and harassment of women in these societies but it somehow promoted this kind of behavior indirectly by making women assume kind of an inferior position.

However the rising prominence of the promotion of women's rights has challenged these traditional norms of culture. This development I would like to call the rise of a ‘new culture.’

In the ‘new culture’ there has been a Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which defines violence against women as ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, force or denial of freedom, whether happening in public or in private life.’

Bodies like the United Nations have also joined the world in the fight against gender violence. The development community’s approach to gender empowerment has evolved since the 1970s when the United Nations’ International Year of Women in 1975 and international women’s decade (1976-85) saw the formation of many women’s ministries and the adoption of ‘Women in Development’ policies by governments and non-governmental bodies.

Presently, when the whole world is fighting to achieve the Millenium Development Goals, respect for gender equality is crucial. The MDG of promoting gender equality and empowering women was set to be achieved 10 years earlier than most of the Millennium Development Goals that face a deadline of 2015 and this testifies to the importance that this goal carries.

The year 2010 marks the end of the first decade of the new millennium and presents an opportunity to examine past achievements and measure the extent to which we have all implemented the resolutions made at the beginning of the new millennium. The major questions that remain unanswered are: how far have we gone in terms of achieving this goal as Africans? Has the top to bottom approach been sufficient to thwart gender violence? What is the way forward on this issue?

There have been strides in the area of equal girls' enrolment in primary school but the other two indicators still lag behind with women's share of paid employment and women's equal representation in national parliaments still remaining very low in Africa according to the United Nations MDG report for 2009.

In my own country Zimbabwe, where women constitute 52 per cent of entire population, there were only 7 Female Ministers against 33 Male Ministers in the cabinet as at 17 June 2009. The same applies to Malawi where Women in Malawi also constitute 52 per cent of the total 12 million Malawi population and yet recent statistics indicate that there are 6 women cabinet ministers out of a total of 37, 9 female chairpersons of parastatal organisations out of 47 and only 4 of 27 judges of the High Court and Supreme Court are women. Men continue to dominate in the public life.

In my opinion, it is crucial for us to know that culture is not static but dynamic. Cultural values are continually being re-interpreted in response to new needs and conditions. Some values are reaffirmed in this process, while others are challenged as no longer appropriate. I think this whole idea is taking too long to sink in most of our African societies.

Sources

1. Eunice Chipangula, Malawi to adopt the legislative quota based system to achieve gender equality in politics and public life, an article published on the Standing upon God’s promise blog on Wednesday, September 26, 2007.












Update my details