Source: This Day
For long, women in our country were extremely restricted in terms of political appointments. This is in spite of the Beijing Declaration in 1995 where leaders and governments were pressured to allot a reasonable number of offices in decision-making to women. However, we are currently witnessing a quiet revolution with the deployment,
Source: AllAfrica
In a move to further promote girls' education, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Rwanda Chapter, in collaboration with Plan Rwanda, have launched a new project dubbed Operation Days Work (ODW) in Bugesera and Gatsibo districts.
One of the priorities of the project is to sensitise the public about the need and importance of equally giving the girl-child a chance to have an education.
"Among other mechanisms we are going to use in ensuring that this project achieves its main objective is to establish youth committees in schools that will act as a channel through which students' challenges, especially girls, will be heard so that appropriate solutions are devised," said Juliana Karamaga, FAWE officer in charge of the project.
She explained that the decision to have the project implemented in the two districts is not that it is only important for those specific districts but that it was where its partner, Plan Rwanda, is currently operating.
Karamaga observed that although the perception by parents that boys are meant to go to school while girls remain at home to engage in domestic work is gradually phasing out, there were still cases where girls are limited to a certain level of education and yet their brothers advance higher.
When Eunice Namugerwa, an 18-year-old living in Kampala’s Kisenyi slum, decided to start a business to support her family last August, she scrawled three ideas down on a bit of scrap paper: a piggery, a fashion boutique and a chicken farm.
The revolution that ousted dictator Ben Ali in January 2011 brought new, hard-won freedom to the Tunisian people. However as the country discovers whether secularism and growing political Islam can co-exist, some women are enjoying greater liberty to practise their religion while others are concerned that their rights may be eroded.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says religious leaders, including those in Christianity and Islam, share the blame for mistreatment of women around the world.
Source: Vanguard
When news spread that Oyinlola Diana Rotimi, a 400 level student at the Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, allegedly attempted to flush her child down the toilet, there were criticisms and counter-criticisms.
Source: Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)
THE plan to become a mother is often a positively fulfilling experience. However, many women suffer and even die as a result of motherhood.
Bogaletch Gebre knows exactly what women in her Ethiopian community are going through. Along with her sisters, the women’s rights activist was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) when she was a child in a part of Ethiopia where the practise was carried out on every girl.
Position paper calls for freedom from violence, equality in capabilities and resources, and women’s voice to be the cornerstones of a stand-alone gender equality goal.
Sometimes it does seem there’s a war over women’s bodies, and nowhere does this seem more dangerous than in the large number of regions where abortion is illegal, unsafe and life-threatening.
United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson today called on all partners – Governments, the private sector, civil society, the media, and ordinary citizens – to help fight human trafficking, stressing that ending this scourge requires action on all fronts.
Source: New Times
Chantal* begun her menstruation periods when she was in primary school. She remembers refusing to go to school for about five days.
Source: Africa Review
At the Itsali primary school, on a dusty road near Brazzaville's airport, all but one of the 20 teachers are women, a sign of the major gender shift in the Republic of Congo's educational system over the past two decades.
Source: Vanguard
Policemen attached to Adeniji Adele division have arrested a 22-year-old man who alleged kidnapped and raped a student of the University of Lagos, UNILAG, Akoka, for turning down his advances
Three postgraduate students at the American University of Cairo have created a campaign with public service announcements addressing domestic violence against women.
Source: Vanguard
More than 100 African business women converged in Lagos recently to lend their voices on the need for more women participation in politics, entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation as tools for nation building. The women who came from four African countries:Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa advocated for women participation, especially in politics.
Source: Tanzania Daily News
A RECENT state report says that more than 3,000 poor children have been saved from the worst forms of labour and offered alternative means of earning a living. Some have been enrolled in vocational training institutions where they may acquire useful skills. This is delightful news but the story does not end here.
Seven-year-old Istar Mumin lies on a bed, motionless, in one of the rooms of her family home in Mogadishu’s Hamarweyne district. She has just gone through the horrifying ritual of “the cut,” which was carried out by a local Somali nurse.
UK Department for International Development (DFID) has approved 2 million Great Britain Pounds to promote and protect women’s rights.
The Female Lawyers Association-Gambia (FLAG) with support from Action Aid International The Gambia Saturday gathered stakeholders at a local hotel in Kololi for a day's seminar, designed at sensitising religious leaders and representatives of faith-based organisations on the critical issues in the draft Domestic Violence and Sexual Offences Bills.