A two-day training workshop has been held at Nalerigu for selected facilitators to encourage communities to eschew harmful socio-cultural practices and to embrace positive masculinities that respect and support the rights of women and girls in the country.
The training workshop was facilitated using the national framework and toolkit for engaging men and boys to help address masculinities and other negative socio-cultural practices such as child and forced marriages.
It was organised by the North East Regional Department of Gender with funding support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
It sought to equip participants with the requisite knowledge and tools to challenge and change gender norms that perpetuated inequality and discrimination against women and girls.
It was also to empower participants to mobilise community support and create a safe environment for open discussions on gender norms, masculinity, and child marriage issues.
Mr Lateef Abubakar, Northern Regional Programmes Officer at the Department of Gender, who facilitated the training, took participants through the toolkit structure, which comprised four operational modules, enabling them to undergo comprehensive training on each of the modules using the corresponding facilitation guide to achieve specific outcomes in the communities.
He said the training would afford participants the opportunity to facilitate group discussion sessions with adolescents in their communities as well as assist them in understanding gender concepts and how gender roles within their immediate context affected the vulnerability of women and girls.
He said masculinity and gendered behaviours were learned, adding no one was born with them and were not predisposed biologically or physiologically amongst others.
Mr Abubakar urged participants to prioritise identifying and recruiting other men and boys as community influencers to form a team to lead the gender transformation process at the community level.
Madam Bushira Alhassan, Northern Regional Director of the Department of Gender, pointed out that harmful socio-cultural practices influenced a group or all the people in a given culture adversely, including their physical, emotional, social, and economic well-being.
She identified some of the harmful cultural practices in the communities such as women and girls’ passive role in various forms of decision-making including sexual negotiation and reproductive choices, wife beating misinterpreted to mean socialisation, witcraft accusations often suffered by women and girls, entrenched gender stereotypes, forced and child marriages, among others.
She called for collective commitment of all stakeholders, especially in the communities to ensure that women and girls were supported to contribute meaningfully to the socio-economic development of the country.
Mr Adam Baani Nantogmah, North East Regional Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, who made a presentation on child marriage, noted that issues of child marriages were rooted on entrenched cultural norms, poverty, lack of education, and gender inequality.
He said societal pressure, traditional beliefs and economic factors contributed to the perpetuation of those harmful practices particularly in communities where girls’ value was often connected to their marital status.
He explained that child marriage had devastating consequences for individuals, especially girls, including increased risks of maternal mortality, limited access to education and other economic opportunities in the country.
Participants commended the Department of Gender and the UNFPA for the training and pledged to organise and lead focal group discussions with adolescents in their communities to create more awareness on the need to support the holistic growth and development of women and girls.
GNA
