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Not much to celebrate on International Women-s Day
Rejoice Zanhi
March 08, 2010

On March 8 women across the globe will be celebrating international women-s day

And in Zimbabwe women will not be looking forward to this day with much vigor and enthusiasm amid a litany of challenges both at house and national level.

International day of Women was set aside with its main being that of upholding women-s rights as well as recognizing the role that women play in improving the lives of the whole nation.

In the past decades we had women who would stay behind to look after children while their husbands embarked on different adventures to fend for their families. Things changed during the days of world wars where the long absence of husbands meant that women were now supposed to carry the burden of raising and fending for children alone. The result of this was that they started realizing their importance hence there was a sudden call by women movements to have equal right with men.

In the past women were regarded as the property of men and neither did they own property nor have voting rights. When such laws were uprooted reforms to recognize women as full citizens took of at a breathtaking pace. Today women across the globe are happy the progress in which the roles they play are being appreciated.

In Africa specifically in Liberia women are proud to have scored a first when a woman was elected the first President. With women now having access to positions of authority politically, it is gratifying to note that we have seen women occupying high positions in multinational companies as managing directors and chief executive officers.

Traditionally, women`s positions were only confined to household chores that is looking after children, cooking and washing for their husbands. The payment of lobola even made things worse because men would ill-treat their wives under the pretext that they paid lobola for them. Thus in some societies when lobola was scrapped this was seen as a positive move to empower women to stand tall and be counted.

There is an adage that says," educate a women you have educated the whole nation", and truly to that adage women have proved beyond doubt that they are capable people who can hold their own in any sphere or life.

In Zimbabwe we now have women who are educated, have their own houses, shops, farms and look after their own families single handedly.

But the formulation of a new constitution which is currently under way has in one way or the other displayed how women are vulnerable to a lot of things. Of late complaints have been raised to the effect that there was no equal representation between men and women in the thematic committees of this constitution making process. From a women-s point of view this is suppression and should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

The era of the Napoleon Bonaparte who said women are not good at anything except bearing children and needle work are gone, women want equal rights at house and national level. But of late the issue of equal rights has been blamed for the separation of most families as women are being accused of insubordination by their husbands .Men claim that they pay their hard earned money as lobola to have their wives thus women are supposed to be submissive to them.

Rita Mupinga of Women Coalition had this to say on the issue of lobola."Traditionally men are supposed to pay lobola for any woman one wants; partners enter into marriage on the basis of love such that everything that a man does for his wife should be guided by that love". She went on further to say our culture directs men to pay lobola as a token of appreciation to the parents of a woman.

Turning to the issue of celebrating Women-s International Day the coalition of women-s director said that women will be staging a march from central business district to Harare Gardens where they will then be addressed by a number of women in positions of authority both in government and society at large.

"Also these celebrations will be held in every province because not all women will be able to come to Harare for the main celebrations," she said.

But these celebrations have come at a time when Zimbabweans women especially those residing in rural areas are facing some of the toughest challenges and have nothing to smile about. The shift from the use of the Zimbabwean dollar to the use of multicurrency has made life unbearable for most women who are not employed because the currency is like a diamond difficult to get. The sporadic rainfall that the country has received has compounded the situation because most crops have been declared a complete right off.

Another issue is that most girl children have dropped out of school due to the overcharging of the currency and a lot of them have taken to prostitution where they risk contacting HIV/AIDS.

As the formulation of the new constitution gathers momentum it remains to be seen what reforms will women come up with to improve their lot.

Rejoice Zanhi is a freelance journalist

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