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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On Strike

A 40 something girl, a political junkie and obsessed, living the Southern California dream, but who knows that we are constantly giving up personal power over to some person or thing which ironically only shrinks our world further, Tricia Butler looks at today’s International Women’s Day.

Today she does not look at the blunt racism of a previous era which was portrayed not by sensationalist car bombings and riots, but through the daily humiliations suffered when doing the most common of things like finding a bathroom to use, checking out a library book or having a cup of coffee, like in “An American Tale”.

Today she also does not talk about repressed countries like Iran where a woman can be hung for adultery after being raped, or Colombia where they are imprisoned when something goes wrong with pregnancy, or in India where 300,000-600,000 female babies are aborted yearly due to their perceived poor value. (see Patricia Arquette’s Acceptance Speech Made Me Want to Hurl)

According to her she is a

woman living in America and I have the same rights as men do, as does Patricia Arquette, as does every woman in the country. {Patricia Arquette’s Acceptance Speech Made Me Want to Hurl}

But are those same rights delivering the same rights?

In Belgium women also should have the same rights as men, but we can see  a lot of economical discrepancy. In the same job by certain companies there still may be a difference in pay for a man and a woman. For certain positions often men  are chosen above women.

In our country we also several women cutting back on hours after giving birth and men choosing higher paying career majors. In our area’s we also may find single childless women to single childless men still having less opportunities than men to go up on the ladder of being confronted by bosses who wonder if that woman wants to become pregnant in the near future.

Though Tricia Butler claims the equality in the States she also writes:

We were created to be seen, heard and understood as individuals, yet are constantly being shuffled off in to groups with predetermined character traits. {The Cannibalizing Nature of Group Identity Politics}

So could it well be that she found out that there is not real equality though they should legally have the same rights? She continues

Women you belong here with the victimized, white males stand over there under the racist/sexist flag and minorities you’re in with the permanently aggrieved, government is your savior crowd. And oh, hey you gays, get in line over there with the rest of the sexually promiscuous crew. {The Cannibalizing Nature of Group Identity Politics}

She continues

Identity politics have been around since at least the 1970s, but the explosion of social media and the prevalence of victimhood mentality syndrome has brought it back with a vengeance.  As it increases, the country becomes more tribal and divided and people become less inclined to take ownership of their problems as they subconsciously get filed away under “it’s someone else’s fault”. {The Cannibalizing Nature of Group Identity Politics}

We are sure that in many countries, like in Belgium, there can be found working women who are not getting paid as much as their male friend with the same job title. The guest-speaker of today writes

Why it’s our patriarch society and its inherent oppression of women of course. It has nothing to do with the fact that your friend works longer hours than you because you requested weekends off with the kids. You are a victim! {Real Victims Deserve More}

Luckily enough we may say that the last few years we can see that politicians want to take more time to think about women’s position. On television we may find serious political discussions on mental health, violence and homelessness, bu it seems in the United States there also may be an incessant blathering from politicians about a fictitious “war on women”. {Real Victims Deserve More}

Today 2017, March 8, women standing in solidarity for fair and equal treatment in several countries may go on strike from work, though from yesterday’s television debates in Belgium most women shall be present at work to deliver their services, some clothed in black as a sign of disillusion and betrayal of the system.

Here in Belgium we do not have to have the idea like some Americans may have.

They want us to believe we are being held back by some societal oppressor; an “ism” that forever prevents us from reaching our full potential.  With this view, everyone and everything becomes an oppressor, something to be offended by and fight against.”

Here it is not so much about an oppressor or males really wanting to be the higher person. In the debates it looked more that several men where also willing to take on household positions or spending more time with the children, though at the moment there is a ‘mentality gap’. Still a lot of work has to be made at the primary and secondary school to get rid of certain old in our society anchored expectations.

 

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Find also to read

1. Why Women Matter
2. Women’s Day?
3. ‘International Women’s Day’…
4. Women’s Day
5. Women’s Day (by Adeshittu)
6. Womens Day
7. When Women Don’t Own the Road
8. Be Proud to Become a Woman!
9. war on women
10. The Women’s March 1/21/17
11. Trump Takes a Step to Escalate Republican’s War on Women
12. But Remember….There Is No Republican War On WOmen – ‘Kentucky GOP files new abortion ban: The only ‘choice’ women have is ‘to conceive or not conceive’
13. Republicans Poised to Support the One-Percent, Destroy the Middle Class, and Weaken the Working Class
14. Why the War on Women Will no Longer Be Tolerated
15. The Liberal Women’s March
16. The Forced-Birth March Is Today
17. The “War on Women” Claims Another Casualty 
18. Not so Polite Dinner Conversation – a day without a woman
19. Women in the Workforce or Dress for Success in the Time of Trump
20. John Cornyn Calls Elizabeth Warren “Little Lady”
21. The Afternoon Quote
22. News That Will Drive You To Drink
23. Ohio Is A Great State For Rapists
24. Women are Losing the War, while a Religious Cult Rejects Human Rights
25. If You Remain a Republican, You Own It
26. Beneath My Exteriors (To women around the world)
27. I Like Being A Woman Because…
28. For My Mom on Women’s Day
29. #BeBoldForChange: A letter to my Girlfriend
30. Women’s Psycho-Spiritual Gifts
31. Happy Women’s Day! 1
32. Happy women’s day 2
33. Celebrating Women in Tech!
34. Women Winners
35. 5 Little Things Women In Jaipur Can Do To Emerge Stronger
36. For the Woman she is
37. Most Men Plan To Spend Women’s Day Sub-Consciously Envying The Ability To Grow People

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Freedom Through Empowerment

On March 8th, women from around the world will stand in solidarity for fair and equal treatment by going on strike from work.  At least I think that’s the gist, but it’s hard to tell because the goals are so generalized and different depending on who you talk to.

This Huffington Post article discusses the event and the platform from the International Women’s Strike USA website which calls for.

• Reproductive justice for women
• An end to gender violence, the wage gap and all forms of bigotry
• Full social provisioning (i.e, vast expansion of the welfare state)
• Environmental justice for all
• Anti racist, anti imperialist feminism
• A day of “love and liberation”

Cover for Far Left Agenda

Well that all sounds a bit squishy to me and I do wish more details were given on just what “unfair and unequal treatment” means for women living in America today. Equal pay has been…

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