Hats off to all women

The Monitor Editor | Tuesday March 15, 2022 06:00

This day is used to celebrate women’s social, economic, cultural and political achievements and also to lobby for equal treatment and representation.

Women are continuing to make a mark across the globe and our country is no different. While women and the girl child continue to experience a lot of bias as compared to their male counterparts, it is encouraging to see that women continue to prove the stereotypes often thrown their way wrong.

We currently have many big multi-national corporations and companies being successfully run by women. Culturally, there are still those who find it hard to come to terms with the fact that women just like their male counterparts can lead, be it in business or the political sphere, and only choose to see them competent as homemakers.

Sadly, women continue to be vastly under-represented in decision-making in politics, businesses and communities. Up to date, there are still churches, which shun the thought of a woman becoming a priest or preacher in their church.

Most mainline churches are slowly beginning to accept women as church leaders. Botswana fares as one of the worst countries in terms of women’s representation in political decision-making. We currently stand at 11% at the National Assembly and 18% at the Local Government.

While there is a lot to celebrate, we have many success stories to tell and show the world, and we still have a long way to go.

We need to make our voices heard and that begins with increasing our representation at different levels of political decision-making. Most political parties in our land have sadly admitted that they do not have gender policies in place, and women politicians have over the years decried sabotage by their male counterparts and other challenges including sexual harassment. For us to get to the promised land, it needs to start with political parties taking the issue of increasing women representation seriously, and sadly even most of the central committees of our political parties do not have enough women representatives to make much of a change.

While lobbying for all to take action we should also make time to celebrate our women, be it our international stars or our local stars, you are all appreciated.

We have many of our own who are working internationally and have won several prestigious international awards, including but not limited to Professor Sheila Tlou, Dr Matshidiso Moeti and many others not mentioned here. Happy International Women’s Day and let's continue to celebrate and honour our women.