Connecting girls, inspiring futures

 March 10, 2012

                                             (Pic: girlchildnetworkworldwide.org)

This year the world commemorated International Women’s Day on March 8 under the theme, “connecting girls, inspiring the future”.

This year’s theme looks at the future through young women, rather than focusing merely on the negative, it is a time to reflect on what has already been achieved and how to move on into the future.

The social, economic, cultural, political, physical, psychological well-being of young women today is important for the development of our society tomorrow.

In line with International Women’s Day, the United Nations has also chosen the theme “Empower Rural Women — End Hunger and Poverty”, a theme that can very well be applied to some women here in Zimbabwe.

Rather than focus on what is going wrong, it will be good to get to a point where we now focus on what has been achieved, who has made it and how others can make it. As we connect girls, it should be our hope that we inspire, build, empower, and develop skills for the future.

The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA)’s Gender Desk: “The matters that concerned women during the colonial era are the same issues that concern women of today — housing, food prices, unemployment, domestic violence, child abuse, HIV and Aids, poverty and gender discrimination.”

We need to find ways to deal with these issues today, considering Section 6 of the Zimbabwe Peoples Charter, adopted on February 9 2008 states:

“We hold that all human beings are created equal, must live and be respected equally with equitable access to all resources that our society offers regardless of their gender.”

This means every young girl should have the right to a good education and equal opportunity in any facet of society.

It is also good to know that in the proposed constitution, the rights of women are as follows:

(1) Every woman has full and equal dignity of the person with men and this includes equal opportunities in political, economic and social activities.

(2) Women have the same rights as men regarding the guardianship of children

(3) All laws, customs, traditions and cultural practices that infringe the rights of women are void to the extent of the infringement.

Rather than see these rights in print, young women should be able to testify that each of these rights have been met adequately in their lives.

Girl Child Creativity project producer and coordinator, Mbizo Chirasha said, “I think there is a slight improvement in the development of the girl child in both the government and other spectrums — female ministers, musicians, actors and women involvement in constitution-making programmes. NGO directors are mostly women, but I think stigma and perception is something we need to work on.”

By the time International Day of the Girl Child comes in October we would like to believe this will be a time to celebrate the progress made for and by the girl child in 2012.

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