Feminism and Gender Equality

There always lies a thin line between gender equality and feminism. Feminist advocates for the realization of Women’s Rights and Gender Advocates on Human Rights and Gender Equality.

Gender equality refers to the opportunities that are available for both women and men to have access to and control of social, economic and political resources. Feminism, on the other hand, focuses on freedom and equal rights of women. Most importantly both feminism and gender equality aims at the realization of Human Rights.

Feminist believe that women are always treated unfairly by the society, their freedom denied and their rights violated. This is particularly true, women for a long time have been disproportionately marginalized in our societies. This is either due to culture, patriarchy, harmful practices, and religion. Feminism has evolved in three waves. The first wave was during the 19th century and early 20th century that focused on women’s suffrage (women’s right to vote), women education and labor conditions. The second wave was from the early 1960s through the late 1980s which fought against cultural inequalities that perpetuate discrimination and gave birth to the women liberation’s movement. The third wave started in the early 1990s after what was perceived as the failure of the second wave. The issues addressed were racial discrimination and involvement of the marginalized poor women. The feminist acknowledged that they have different needs and concerns and that they should be united to a common opposition to gender and oppression. The fourth wave of feminism emerged in 2008 which was formed around technology.

The waves of feminism pioneered the Women in Development (WID) approach focused on integrating women in the workplace and improve their standards of living. It faced criticisms for viewing women as homogenous and not considering women from developed worlds. This led to Women and Development (WAD) approach which focused on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. Then came Gender and Development (GAD) that feminist had a realization that unequal representation of sexes hinders their development and that men play an important role to realize gender equality.

Often than not Feminist have the view that Gender Advocates do not give attention to the women’s needs and concerns when they are developing policies and implementing them. And for this I will forever echo, gender is situational, women and men are all vulnerable, only differentiated by the situations.

I was listening to a gender forum on dismantling patriarchy, from the audience, a man identified himself as a male feminist, sometimes they feel not welcomed and they do not know how better they could help. Another one said he is more than happy to be there and would love to know more on the feminist campaigns. The response from the audience and the panelist who were women just left me in a state of awe. The first man got a response that women do not have time to make them feel at home and that he should find his purpose as he comes around the issues that surround women inequality. Pause! That was a moment of silence! The other response from the audience, the men were told they are not even invited to participate in issues that involve women. Another moment of silence! Thinking about these two gentlemen, how they felt discouraged to think that they cannot participate in women issues just by being men.

I always appreciate people’s opinion, thanks to understanding cultural diversity. From this situation, I would like to make some highlights to our feminists out there. I support Women’s Rights and my friend calls us Gender Advocates. A great of a percentage of feminist use the approach of the first wave of feminism and the WID approach that excludes the men. Men play a vital role in realizing Gender Equality and Women’s Rights. As women, we want to be represented everywhere and our needs to be taken into consideration, being able to break the glass ceiling and get up from the sticky floors and reach up to the men, we need the escalator from the men. The positions that we want to occupy are currently occupied by men unless we are planning a coup d’ Etat. I am very aware of the notion that women are done from asking and they come and take. At the end of the day, for us to sustain our positions we need to have the support from the men.

Feminism has evolved and we have gender equality. Gender covers both women and men and the vulnerable groups; children, refugees, persons with special needs to avoid violation of their rights. Gender equality ensures the realization of Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, Refugees Rights and persons with special needs rights. So for our feminist and gender advocate, men play a critical role when it comes to the realization of gender equality, sidelining and locking them out of our conversations makes us lose a great deal.

Women let’s make disciples out of our men, engage them on Women’s rights and Gender Equality and send them forth to the world to preach and make more disciples.

By: Nyabena Susan