Girl Child
“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants”
Coco Chanel
When you think of a woman, what are the words that come
to your mind?
Elegance, beauty, class,
modesty or maybe a hardcore feminist?
Now I would like to put you in the lives of an African
woman nay a Ghanaian woman, what springs to mind? I will save you from
pondering on the thought and tell you about the life of many women here in
Ghana.
A woman is not always treated as who she wants to be and
in many cases is deprived of her rights to go to school, speak when men speak
and the saddest being the treatment of widows after the death of their husbands.
What usually comes after the death of
her husband is an accusation of murder and what follows can be described as
being one of the most horrific things i have heard. The woman is sometimes made to sleep beside
his lifeless body on the same bed, walk bare footed around the community, shave
her head completely, and when the body of her husband is washed she is made to
drink the water. This is done with the mindset that if she has killed her
husband she will also die. She goes through a lot; many become depressed and sometimes
even die from this process not because they committed murder. I would like to
clarify this does not happen to all widows in Ghana but to large enough number
that it requires a mention.
The gender inequalities do not stop there but extend to
the education of the girl children in Ghana with a proportionally higher number
of boys being sent to school than girls.
This is most likely because of the traditional roles men and women take
in Ghanaian society, with girls taking a domestic role in the home. Prior to
school, the girl child is expected to sweep the house, mop the floor and
perform many domestic chores. The consequences of this is that she has to wake
up earlier than her brothers at home which would mean that she is considerably
more tired during the day or does not even get a chance to go to school.
As part of the “Life project” we hold a girls club in
Wiaga, a more rural setting compared to Sandema. The first time we visited the
girls club we were astounded by the sheer amount of girls who had come to take
part in the club. Initially the first game we played was to get the girls to
introduce themselves to each other and ourselves, but it also got us to hear
their ambitions. The most common
ambition we heard was “I want to be a medical doctor” followed quickly by a
round of applause. It was awe inspiring hearing the level of support they had
for each other, but one has to wonder will they get this opportunity. We took
the opportunity to ask the girls what they wanted to learn and we got personal
hygiene, child labour and human rights. Although we hoped to get more topics from
the girls it was our first time meeting and we would consider it a very
successful one.
Overall we are looking forward to our future girls clubs,
not because we think in the short time we have we can entirely change the life
of the girl child of Wiaga but because we believe that we can make some
difference to it.
Nyasha UKV & Godiva ICV
We would
like to give a gracious thank you to all the women in the world, as we know
that wherever you are in this world you have faced inequality because of your
gender. Therefore I would like to reiterate Hillary Clinton’s words in 1998
“Women’s rights are Human rights”.
No comments:
Post a Comment