The ManicaPost
Bridget Sarah Zhou Post Correspondent
With the nation still commemorating the International Day of the Girl Child, it is important to answer why the focus is on the girl child.
This question is often asked to social workers and child rights, human rights and women’s rights advocates as they fight child abuse, child marriages, and teen pregnancies.
If we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it. An American writer, Pearl Buck, once said: “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday”.
So what’s the history? Rights are given to us by virtue of us being human so that we are treated with dignity. But historically, women have not been treated as equal to men.
In the past, they did not have the right to make their own decisions with regards to their children, contracts, or property. They were perpetual minors. They could not vote or hold public offices. They also couldn’t work in certain professions or be paid the same salaries as their male counterparts.
This background is therefore imperative in addressing the question; why girls? The simple answer is that girls were previously disadvantaged. Men had access to various rights and opportunities that women didn’t have access to.
The advent of promoting, respecting and protecting women’s rights at international level is particularly visible in the preamble of the Unilateral Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which recognises that women and men have equal rights.
In Article Two of the UDHR, everyone is entitled to all the rights without distinction of any kind, including gender or any other status.
Despite this clarity, historically women still did not enjoy the same treatment as men in practice, hence the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw) in 1979.
The convention focuses on the elimination of sex-based discrimination, prohibiting any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex. Further, states are obligated to eliminate discrimination and achieve substantive equality — including making appropriate policy and legislative reforms.
The term ‘substantive equality’ is key in this discourse, and an explanation of the difference to ‘formal equality’ is necessary. Formal equality is akin to the famous idiom by Aristotle that: ‘Like things must be treated alike’.
Formal equality promotes individual justice as the basis for a moral claim to virtue and is reliant upon the proposition that fairness (the moral virtue) requires consistent or equal treatment. It is basically equal treatment. It does not address past discrimination or unfairness.
On the other hand, substantive equality looks at the history. It is remedial and seeks to put someone who was previously disadvantaged at the same level with the privileged person by giving the former more opportunities.
This includes affirmative action which provides for special advantages through laws and policies to address discrimination suffered by disadvantaged groups, in this case, women. It is done with the aim of creating a more equal society.
According to the South African Constitutional Court case Harksen v Lane, substantive differentiation can be allowed if it does not amount to discrimination.
Equity is also a principle related to substantive equality which refers to the fairness and equality in outcomes that deals with the accumulated disadvantages of the past.
In simple terms, it is giving more to those who have previously received less so that eventually they can be on the same level with those that have been historically advantaged.
There is both support and opposition for both the formal and substantive approach. But there is a common ground — often development strategies focus on the realities on the ground, the statistics gathered and the social problems that are evident. For instance, the social ills that are prevalent everywhere include (but are not limited to) gender-based violence, child marriages, teen pregnancies, female gender mutilation. These disproportionately affect women more than men.
According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey of 2019, 2,9 percent of married women interviewed had committed physical violence towards their partners, while 37,1 percent of women were subjected to physical violence by their partners. The disparity is clear; women are more affected, but that’s not to say men are not affected.
Zimbabwe has ratified key instruments which protect women’s rights, including Cedaw, the Optional Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women as well as the Sadc Protocol on Gender and Development.
There is also the National Gender Policy which addresses gender inequality. Legislative interventions have been laudably put in place, including the Domestic Violence Act (Chapter 5:16) 2007 and the Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013.
The Constitution of Zimbabwe lists ‘gender equality’ as a founding value. Section 17 states that gender balance will be promoted in the Zimbabwean society, ensuring that there is full participation of women in all spheres on the basis of equality with men, among other things.
In 1995 at the World Conference on Women in Beijing (with about 30 000 men and women from 200 countries), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted to advance the rights of women and girls.
On December 19, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 to declare October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child to recognise girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.
As we commemorate the International Day of the Girl Child, let us remember history, let us remember the reality on the ground and let us stand together with girls for a fair, equal world.
Under this year’s theme: “My Voice, Our Equal Future”, we focus on girls’ demands to:
• Live free from gender-based violence, harmful practices
• Learn new skills towards the futures they choose?
• Lead as a generation of activists accelerating social change.
Importantly, the State must take positive measures to rectify gender discrimination and imbalances resulting from past practices and policies, which directly speaks on the need to channel more efforts and resources towards women and girls.
In numerous platforms, there are frequent criticisms that “women now have more rights” and that “women’s rights are threatening marriages and homes”.
But the fact is that there are no specific ‘women’s rights’ except for those that are dictated by nature, such as maternity leave rights.
Rather, there are only human rights! The same rights that men have are those that women have too.
But in protecting these rights, the role of men and boys cannot be underestimated. This is because some men and boys are potential perpetrators of abuses against women and girls. The protection of women and girls involves confronting patriarchal norms through gender transformative strategies.
It is important to stand united in ending the cycle of abuse among both men and women. We cannot leave men behind; but focusing on the girl child is not about blaming men, it is about standing together in solidarity to achieve gender equality and a better world.
Bridget Sarah Zhou is a project coordinator at Simukai Child Protection Programme
