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PYD statement on International Women's Day
Platform for Youth Development
March 08, 2012

Platform for Youth Development Trust (PYD) joins the rest of the world in commemorating the International Women's Day. As an organisation working with rural women, the theme could not come at a better time than now. Rural women have endured the brunt of sweating to end poverty and hunger in their respective homes. Living in a country with high unemployment, rural women have not been spared of temptations to shelve their values as they seek to make ends meet.

Rural young women have been exposed to girl pledging and other traditional social cultures without considering their right to choice. They continue to live under horrible conditions such as patriarchy which relegates them to spectators and subjects of decision made in their absence. Claiming and fighting for their rights is translated to mean being rebellious by a culture that is not sincere to the changing demands of the 21st century.

Due to HIV/AIDS, rural young women have been exposed to bread winning roles which in normal circumstances should be the business of elder family members. The burden of bread winning has never been light to the extent that some of them have dropped out of school to donate their labour for survival. Societal backward tendencies have also worked to deny rural young women education. Scores of societies still do not believe in the education of the girl child. Young girls are recruited from rural areas for exploitation as domestic workers sacrificing their education on the altar of money and greediness.

Our appeal to the government of Zimbabwe is to create an enabling environment for women to escape threatening poverty and hunger. The empowerment project in Zimbabwe has not been advantageous to women especially young women who have not been accorded the same opportunity to own means of production. Society has not been welcoming and receptive of women's ideas and ventures. Successful women in business have often been tagged immoral or loose. Should we allow our society to continue to suffocate women and deny them an opportunity to leave peaceful and decent lives?

It is high time government place stringent laws that criminalise employing underage girls in domestic work. The biggest empowerment that young women need at the moment is education. If they are educated they are automatically extricated from poverty and hunger. We can end poverty and hunger by empowering women to be masters of their own destiny.

Together for an equal society with empowered women, poverty and hunger can be a thing of the past. Let's work together.

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