Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Montañas de la Sierra de Agalta, Olancho. Honduras. Photo by Dennis Garcia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Tuesday in Honduras lawmakers voted unanimously to ban child marriage, making it illegal in the Central American nation for children under the age of 18 to get married under any circumstances.

“The fight against child marriage is a strategic way of promoting the rights and empowerment of women in various areas, such as health, education, work, freedom from violence,”

Portillo, Plan’s Honduras country director, said in a statement.

Enforcing the law will be hardest in indigenous communities and poor rural areas in Honduras where child marriage is most prevalent, campaigners say.

A lot has still to be done all over the world where 1 in 5 women aged 15-49 are reported to have experiencing physical and/or sexual violence even by an intimate partner within a 12 month period.

Data on the prevalence of violence against women and girls is often lacking. This is especially true for women and girls with disabilities, ethnic minorities, migrant workers and older women. Even where the data exists, comparability across and within countries remains a considerable challenge for global monitoring.

It is each responsible citizen to take action when he or she sees something abnormal. Each of us has to take the responsibility to eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).

The sensitive nature of FGM poses challenges in the reliable collection and comparability of such data, as families are reluctant to provide these details. In addition, prevalence levels among different groups and/or regions within countries are not always available, leaving only national prevalence rates which obscure differences.

Also lots of work has to be made to have woman put on the same scale as their male counterparts at work, having the same pay. Wages for the same work has to be equal for man and woman, with the only difference that those who do it already longer, have much more experience and as such can work faster, should be allowed a premium for their ‘seniority’.

Unpaid domestic and care work should be recognised by the governments and as such be accounted for the retirement rates. those women who spend time to bring up their kids should not be penalised. It should be taken into account that those who want to do a full-time job and put their children under the care of others, either should pay the prize for such service, or when getting it cheaper should share in the cost for a pensionfund for those who take care of their kids themselves and as such can not earn more money to live more in luxury.

On the job, in politics every woman should have the same say as their male counterparts. We do have to ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life. For this we should see that it is already established in the local clubs and smaller groups in our society and is represented in the amount of active local politicians. Everywhere we should take care that every girl or woman counts and shall be heard.

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Please read

• Honduras bans child marriages and removes parental permission exception
• The human rights crisis in Honduras
• Spotlight on Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

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Further reading

1. Building / Raising the girl child
2. Empowering Gender Equality
3. Equality for women, really?
4. Chinna chinna aasai 
5. The Political Posterity
6. Why Women’s Money Means Less
7. Gender pay gap explained by children and choice of field, study finds
8. Reflections on the links between Johns and everyone else who sexually objectifies women.
9. Reviewing Goal 5 at HLPF!
10. What is HLPF?
11. Types of Feminism

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