On Poverty in the North and Empowering Women
The
degrading and inhuman living conditions that many women are forced to
go through can never be justified under whatever guise. The worst part is
that such living conditions aren't shared by many men who rarely go through
these things being outside the home-front most of their time.
And what is in need of being reformed transcends a woman going to work. It encompasses empowerment in the form of a woman knowing how to take care of her hygiene and that of her siblings/children.
A woman having the enabling environment to make local spaghetti, sell it, and over time one day turn this into a mini factory that sells packaged spaghetti.
A woman being able to stitch and weave cloths in her bedroom and use the proceeds to help her brothers and sisters and parents to make ends meet and perhaps her siblings can gain the educational resources that she couldn't get.
And it is these sort of activities that need to be documented so that when government is making policies they will be taken into cognisance and appropriate measures will be put in place to provide an enabling environment for them. When a person is trying to learn how to fish in a pond...then show him the way to the river and eventually the ocean.
Yet you find uncountable instances where such examples that I've given above get their very first hinderance from the father/husband who are supposed to be supportive.
I've known of cases where a woman is tailor but because her husband feels threatened by her empowerment, she is given a choice between her marriage and the use of her skill. And the worst part is that the husband isn't affluent enough to claim that such income cannot be put to good use in his household. Rather they prefer that such is forfeited and a lower standard of living is maintained.
I have so many instances of these and as such I do not see a near end to this especially in an amicable manner. Just of recent we are hearing of 1000 women (divorcees & widows) who are to be married off. This is a clear-cut case of lack of empowerment on the side of the women for I can bet you that if they were 'empowered' many would have been married and perhaps many wouldn't even be divorced...(most of which they are).
Today, we hear of a lot of hullabaloo about women's rights especially with regards to our Muslim societies and those who are not part of our societies can only see the religious dimension because every time issues crop up the 'ulama' raise up the religious dimension defensively instead of researching and finding solutions to the largely cultural/traditional underpinnings of such issues.
This is where and why there will be resistance to any desirable change for so long as issues are wrapped in religious cloaking it is hard to disentangle them and lay the sticks straight. But only time will tell for something will surely give...
And what is in need of being reformed transcends a woman going to work. It encompasses empowerment in the form of a woman knowing how to take care of her hygiene and that of her siblings/children.
A woman having the enabling environment to make local spaghetti, sell it, and over time one day turn this into a mini factory that sells packaged spaghetti.
A woman being able to stitch and weave cloths in her bedroom and use the proceeds to help her brothers and sisters and parents to make ends meet and perhaps her siblings can gain the educational resources that she couldn't get.
And it is these sort of activities that need to be documented so that when government is making policies they will be taken into cognisance and appropriate measures will be put in place to provide an enabling environment for them. When a person is trying to learn how to fish in a pond...then show him the way to the river and eventually the ocean.
Yet you find uncountable instances where such examples that I've given above get their very first hinderance from the father/husband who are supposed to be supportive.
I've known of cases where a woman is tailor but because her husband feels threatened by her empowerment, she is given a choice between her marriage and the use of her skill. And the worst part is that the husband isn't affluent enough to claim that such income cannot be put to good use in his household. Rather they prefer that such is forfeited and a lower standard of living is maintained.
I have so many instances of these and as such I do not see a near end to this especially in an amicable manner. Just of recent we are hearing of 1000 women (divorcees & widows) who are to be married off. This is a clear-cut case of lack of empowerment on the side of the women for I can bet you that if they were 'empowered' many would have been married and perhaps many wouldn't even be divorced...(most of which they are).
Today, we hear of a lot of hullabaloo about women's rights especially with regards to our Muslim societies and those who are not part of our societies can only see the religious dimension because every time issues crop up the 'ulama' raise up the religious dimension defensively instead of researching and finding solutions to the largely cultural/traditional underpinnings of such issues.
This is where and why there will be resistance to any desirable change for so long as issues are wrapped in religious cloaking it is hard to disentangle them and lay the sticks straight. But only time will tell for something will surely give...
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