The History of Gender equality has to date back to the understanding of gender inequality and the intersections of oppressions African women have gone through, which have led to the suffering of today’s women. Even though we did not face the immediate oppression our great grandmothers did, we are still in the chokehold of a bias made to dictate and overlook us.
Before colonization, women held prominent positions just as powerful as their male counterparts. They played roles socially and politically, allowing them to be at the forefront of prestigious ceremonies and giving them titles such as queen mother. They participated in roles such as caregiving within the home and outside the home as advisors and leaders – their roles within the home were mirrored in public.
Gender Equality on Economic Empowerment
Economically, women participated actively in trade, which gave them privileges and a decent amount of power, all which made a positive contribution to the community. Patriarchy and colonization brought to us by the white man shifted gender relations. Within African societies, women were demoted as chiefs and were segregated to specific jobs where they were paid peanuts after providing complex amounts of labor. There was sexual violence against them by the colonialists, and the European education system favored the boy child. In contrast, the white man only saw it fit for the boy child to stay educated. Women’s health was overlooked. Women couldn’t move economically & politically without the permission of a spouse, and so on.
The intersections in this demise of the colonial gender inequality to today’s period are as follows; the gender pay gap where women earn only 77 cents for every dollar that a man gets for the same work, 1 in 3 women have experienced physical and or sexual violence. Two-thirds of developing countries have achieved gender parity in primary education, and Only 24% of national parliamentarians were women as of November 2018, a slight increase from 11.3% in 1995.
Feminism Gender Equality
Feminism and women empowerment are bridges leading us to gender equality. Feminism is not a fight against men, but against the patriarchy men uphold. Many conflate gender equality with women wanting to embody a masculine role in society. But the question is, who assigned these roles to gender? Which statistical yardstick did they use? If your answer is the patriarchy, then you are inches away from understanding that the fight against women is a pernicious system that will poison our society into long-term suffering because the patriarchy has convinced us that genders assigned to us at birth confine us to certain roles and positions we are to encompass in society.
Dynamics that assemble equality are not static. Equality knows no bounds, sees no gender and is breeding grounds for balance, and as long as we are at war with women, balance will never be attained. This topic is one in so many that Kenya and Africa need to ensure society reevaluates its understanding and stands at the forefront of supporting women.
Via Sustainable Development Goals, we can know the target goals of gender equality Kenya is inching towards, and that is:
- End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
- Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private sphere, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
- Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child early, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.
- Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.
- Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at decision-making levels in political, economic and public life.
- Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive rights as agreed under the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.
- Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources and access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, following national laws.
- Enhance the use of enabling technology to promote the empowerment of women.
- Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.
REFERENCES: UNDP SDGs, Kenya website.
Side note: this is in honor of Women’s History Month.
