The human race is premised on the existence of a gender specie in abundance. To understand this context in its entirety, one must grasp the dispassionate explanation of equity vis à vis equality.
There are two factors to take into consideration in explaining the concept of equity; these are fairness and justice. In understanding these two concepts and implementing the accompanying actions, which may take other forms, the courts of law are used to determine the line of action.
In assessing the weight of gender parity – the male factor being dominant in all aspects of life globally – it is important to make a certain deliberate attempt to draft and entrench the principle of equity in national policies.
On the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the United States of America, Kamara Harris, the US vice-president, charged the director of domestic policy to make sure that the centre of the Biden administration is equity. She further said it is through such policies that the world will begin to heal from the sad realities of the past.
Equity tells the story of a level playing ground. This platform gives equal rights, equal opportunity and equal status. This informed the 1995 Beijing Conference, where there was a significant turning point in the fight against inequality in the gender process.
To Beijing and back again
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted unanimously by 189 countries, was, to put it simply, an agenda for women’s empowerment. It has become a key global policy document on gender equality.
For the purposes of education and history, this part of the article will employ the use of oral tradition to establish a basis for the upward progression of the theme.
In the cultural practices of the Akan people of Ghana, the custom 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 queen mother of the clan, who further vets and approves the candidate for the kingship. This is the cultural practice that empowered women in the affairs of the Akan people in Ghana.
Since the late 1970s, the term “empowerment” has been applied liberally 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’s 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 feminists of the global south, received no support from governments or bilateral and multilateral development agencies (Parpart, 2002). Increasingly numerous and well-organised feminist NGOs pleaded for the term’s use, however, and by the mid-1990s, it had entered institutionalised discourse on women in development.
The International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994, was one of the first United Nations 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 resolving population issues.
Keep a balance
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 and status in society as men.
The oral tradition of the Akan culture is important to the core of this development, in that every woman is as important as possible to the cause of the human race.
The dependency on another gender and expectations that it will help clamour for importance in the scheme of things is moot from scratch. I have on many occasions suggested and wished that we begin the change and clarion call agenda from within our fold; by first seeking to legislate against the use of female head porters in our markets. Inhumane though that might be, because it would deprive them of their livelihood, this kind of work is not worthy of life.
Second, orient us against the thought that women need special treatment to achieve, not opportunities. The “take the girl child to school” mantra is one of the most dominant themes we encountered when growing up but, in fact, though it benefited women, it diminished the prospects of the male child. Many of these boys became dropouts, who ended up as deviants harassing women.
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 that, in my line of duty, opportunities are given to both genders and similar output is expected of them.
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.
Gifty Oware-Mensah
The writer is the deputy executive director of the National Service Scheme
References
- Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995
- 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: 1,799-1,825
- 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
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