Violence Against Women: A Challenge To Millennium Development Goals

A Ghana News Agency Feature By B.A. Adom

Accra, May 3, GNA - It has often been said that there could be no development without women. This is a remarkable statement with socio-biological underpinnings in that though men play a crucial role in procreation women are endowed with a capacity to conceive babies nine months until delivery.


In times of nurturing too, women play dominant roles such as bathing, caring, breastfeeding, and language teaching, just to mention a few. It is also true that God put power in a woman's mouth and that of man in his hands. It is estimated that in Sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute 60 per cent of those in the informal sector of the economy; provide about 70 per cent of the total agricultural labour and produce about 90 per cent of the food. This available statistics indicate that Women play crucial roles in the socio-economic development of the country.


However, it is quite disturbing to turn a blind eye to the various forms of atrocities and the psychological trauma being meted out to some Women in recent past. This canker has become deeply rooted in our social fabric that it is about time that series of educational campaigns were mounted to stem it.


Ignorance, poverty, disobedience or infidelity account for the widespread violence against.

Others claim that these days marriage has become an issue of business arrangement devoid of love and that perhaps prompts some Men to perpetrate violence against Women anytime they felt short-changed. By Divine agenda, all the fingers were not made equal and each and every given finger contributes proportionately to make a whole. It is against this backdrop that led to the debate on Women empowerment during the 1995 Beijing Conference in order to fulfil their socio-economic roles in society.


Though tremendous strides have been made in the education of girls in this regard many more women remain out there, who have been subjected to wilful cruelty and malicious forms of violence as a result of their inability to render proper account of monies entrusted into their care. Some girls are exploited. They are made to carry heavy loads over very long distances and paid peanuts at the end of the day.


In the course of running errands some of these girls disregard motor traffic and are often knocked down by speeding vehicles.


Adults exploit young girls. They strip-mine their inner resources for wealth or for pleasure, until they become worthless in society. What then is the root of violence and its socio-economic impact on national development?

The Collins Concise Dictionary defines violence in general as the exercise or an instance of physical force, usually effecting or intended to effect injuries, destruction, etc., powerful, untamed, or devastating force, great strength of feeling as in language.


This definition broadly underscores the fact that violence can be physical or psychological as in beatings, scourging and verbal abuse. It also has links with socio-economic and socio-cultural beliefs such as economic deprivation and sexual abuse- rape, fondling of breast, defilement, child-prostitution and slavery and working in life-threatening environment.


Unfortunately, socio-cultural beliefs reinforce the subordination of women. Society views Women as the weaker vessels and men as breadwinners, who should always provide the means of livelihood. For that matter some Women are not given education at all, let alone vocational training.


This in a way put Women in a position of inferiority because they lacked the education or any form of economic skills to empower them to fulfil their socio-economic roles.

As a result when they ask their husbands money and they are unable to give them because of poverty, it becomes a verbal exchange. In the final analysis, they are beaten up and the marriages hit a rock. The question then arises as to whether the children should stay with their mother or father. When the father decides to stay with the children, they become vulnerable to all forms of social vices such as teenage pregnancy, school dropouts, abortion and hawking because of his limited time at home.


In many cases, the girls are below 15 years of age and ignorant about their rights; hence, for fear of being neglected by their fathers during unwanted pregnancies they secretly connive with their mothers, who collect monies from the perpetrators for abortion, which could bring about several complications such as the blockade of the fallopian tube, cancer of the uterus, fibroid and inability to bear children in the future with the less fortunate ones losing their lives.


As a matter of fact, these dark practices are a denial of what civilization values because they make women to lose their sense of value and worth in society.


INTERVENTIONS

Perhaps women could be encouraged to build their self-esteem to enable to contribute to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).


It is envisaged that infant and maternal mortality would be reduced to two-thirds and three-quartersa, respectively by 2015 under the MDG. To achieve these goals it is crucial for the churches, civil society including healthcare advocates to include in their programmes the message of moral uprightness and how to adopt healthy lifestyles for a better future to improve their physical, social and mental well-being. It is gratifying to note that the French Embassy in Ghana has funded a craft centre for the Single Mothers' Association of Yorogo, in the Bolgatanga District, as a way of empowering the women with economic skills.


An enabling environment must also be created for women, especially hawkers within the Accra Metropolis and its environs to access funds from the Poverty Alleviation Fund to learn a vocation or undertake their own businesses.


This would enable these women to fend for themselves and even share the responsibility of home maintenance with their male counterparts so as to breakout from that spirit of dependency and subordination.