Empowerment

 Although African women produce the majority of the food in Africa, they also virtually assume sole responsibility for child-rearing, care of the elderly and the sick, the procurement of fuel and water and the tending of small livestock. Yet they are still the poorest of the poor because of gender inequality. This is why The RWDA and the Kanga Project are strong proponents of helping women understand and fight this inequality through empowerment, self-awareness, education and financial independence. As women realize that their domesticity, understood as the private ties that keep them from actively participating in the public sphere are artificially constructed, they can begin the process of becoming visible, heard and effective at all levels of political life.

Click here to see how we provide economic opportunities for financial independence.

Want to know more about why empowering women is so vital? Then please read the following two extracts.

From Hope Chigudu in “Composing a New Song - Stories of Empowerment in Africa.”

"African women have long been the poorest and the most neglected group in their societies. So poor as to be almost non-existent physically, socially and spatially. Gender bias in the African lifestyle is rooted in the African concept of social order and form, buttressed by traditional spirituality. The marginalisation of women in Africa is taken for granted and argued forcefully on the premise of 'our culture' and partriarchy."

From Sylvia Tamale. Full article on http://www.codesria.org/Links/conferences/gender/TAMALE.pdf

"Resources for African women constitute a complex and broad concept that goes beyond a laundry list of assets that would not go far in empowering them. More important are the institutional and ideological factors that inhibit women's access to and control over resources. For any talk of a renaissance to hold substance in Africa we must seriously address issues of gender inequalities. This means that African leaders and the populations at large must be prepared for changes of revolutionary proportions. It is very sad indeed that we have to speak of "a revolution" in reference to granting the continental majority their full dignity and rights. However, it is quite clear that without liberating the womenfolk, any attempts to rebuild Africa will be truncated, an exercise in futility.

In short, there is no short cut to Africa's liberation other than through women's empowerment. However, my reference to African women as a collective in relation to resource accessibility and control stem from two important factors. First, the glaring statistics that show that the overwhelming number of resourceless people on the continent are women - so much so that one loses track of the very few who actually have control over and access to resources. Secondly, and more important, is that regardless of the differences that may exist between and within African women, all are affected by and are vulnerable to the conceptual and functional space that they occupy in the domestic sphere. Moreover, no African woman can shield herself from the broad negative and gendered legacies left behind by forces such as colonialism, imperialism and globalisation. Thus, the term is used politically to call attention to the common oppression that African women endure by virtue of their simple membership to the social group called women.

As you have all noted by now, there is nothing I have said in this paper that has not been said before. Déjà vu is our collective affliction! It is TIME FOR ACTION NOW!"