The human race is premised on the existence of a gender specie in abundance. To understand this context in its entirety, the dispassionate explanation of Equity vis Equality must be communicated. Equity has two factors of consideration in explaining its concept; and they are fairness and justice.
In understanding these two concepts and implementing the actions they come with, in other forms, the courts of law are used to determine such. In the world of gender parity, where the male factor is dominate in all aspects of the global sphere, it is important to process a certain deliberate attempt to embed the equity draft into national policies.
On the day of inauguration for the Biden administration, Kamara Harris, the Vice President of the United State of America charged the Domestic Policy Director to make sure the centre of the Biden Governance is Equity. She further mentioned that it was through such policies that, the world would begin to heal from the sad realities of the past. Equity tells the story for a level playing ground.
This platform gives equal rights, equal opportunities, and statuses. This informed the 1995 Beijing Conference, where a significant turning point happened in the fight against inequality in the gender process. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted by a unanimous 189 countries was simply an agenda for women empowerment. This has become a key global policy document on gender equality.
For the purposes of education and history, this part will employ the use of oral tradition to establish a basis for the upward progression of this theme. In the cultural establishment of the Akan people of Ghana, the practice is that a king only gets nominated by the oldest woman in a family. In the case of gates, every royal gate has an older woman who nominates an eligible candidate to be vetted and enstooled as the king of the clan. The nomination is handed over to the Queenmother of the clan, who further vets and approve the candidate for the kingship. This is the cultural establishment that empowered women in the affair of the Akan people in Ghana.
Since the late 1970s, the term “empowerment” has been liberally applied by academics and aid workers in the English-speaking world, including in social services, social psychology, public health, adult literacy, and community development (Simon 1994). Today the word is even more in vogue and has even entered the worlds of politics and business. From popular psychology to self-help, the infatuation with empowerment in the English-speaking world appears boundless: in 1997 there was even a book published in the United States on “self-empowerment” for dogs (Wise 2005). This sets the stage for how the word empowerment has evolved to become the basis for which women empowerment has taken centre stage in our discussions.
The feminist movement in the Global South can be credited with the formal appearance of the term “empowerment” in the field of international development. A turning point in the concept’s history came in 1987 with the publication of Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives (Sen and Grown 1987). This book is the result of the reflection of feminist researchers, activists, and political leaders from the Global South, who collectively formed the network known as DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) founded in Bangalore in 1984. It introduces broad principles for a new approach to the role of women in development. This approach will soon be labelled the “empowerment approach” (Moser 1989).
At first deemed too radical, the empowerment approach developed in the 1980s by the feminists of the Global South initially received no support from governments or bilateral and multilateral development agencies (Parpart 2002). Increasingly numerous and well-organized feminist NGOs pled for the term’s use, however, and by the mid-1990s, it had entered institutionalized discourse on women in development. The International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994 is one of the first UN conferences to give the concept international visibility. Though the conference is not specifically focused on women, the action plan adopted in Cairo identifies women’s empowerment and gender and sexual rights as central to population issues.
It is important to note that, in all these projections, the core of the campaign is lost on the proponents of the feminine gender. In actual sense, the focus rather must be on the equity tangent, where women are treated fairly and given the same opportunities as men and statuses in society. The oral tradition of the Akan culture is important to the core of this development; in that, every woman is important to the course the human race as possible.
The dependency and expectations on another gender to clamour importance in the scheme of things is moot from the scratch.
I have on many occasions suggested and wished that, we begin the change and clarion call agenda from our folds; by first seeking to legislate against the use of female head porters in our markets, as inhumane as that would be, it is not worthy of life. Second, orient us against the thoughts that, women need special treatment to achieve but opportunities. In fact, take the girl child to school mantra is one of the most important themes we witnessed while growing up, and while it benefited women, it dwindled the prospects of the male child and most became dropouts who ended up as deviants to harass women in the end.
You owe the female race a duty to stand up for fairness and justice, I owe the same duty to my conscience to make sure in my line of duty, opportunities are given to both genders and similar outputs expected.
It is late, but happy International Women’s Day and while we strive to break the bias, we must also endeavour to show competence and be ready for competition.
Reference:
1995 Beijing Conference
Wise, Judith Bula. 2005. Empowerment Practice with Families in Distress, New York: Columbia University Press
Moser, Caroline O.N. 1989. “Gender Planning in the Third World: Meeting Practical and Strategic Gender Needs.” World Development 17, 11: 1799-1825
Parpart, Jane L. 2002. “Gender and Empowerment: New Thoughts, New Approaches.” In The Companion to Development Studies, edited by Vandana Desai and Robert B. Potter, 338–341. New York: Oxford University Press.
Source: Mrs. Gifty Oware-Mensah Deputy Executive Director. National service scheme