Gender Links has joined thousands of organisations and communities around the world in calling for the largest day of peaceful demonstration across the world to be stretched into a year-long campaign for equality and justice.
Gender Links accompanied more than a million people around the world who recently took to the streets in peaceful marches in support of women and minority group rights.
The march came just a day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th United States of America (USA) President. Women made up an estimated 80 per cent of the marchers demanding gender equality, climate justice, gender and diversity. Immigration activists and communities of all races, religions, genders and abilities in 673 locations joined the march.
“It is no coincidence that women, who across every one of these issues constitute the majority of those who are marginalised, violated, dispossessed and disenfranchised, are leading this monumental movement for change,” said GL CEO Colleen Lowe Morna.
The 2016 SADC Gender Protocol Barometer shows that in Southern Africa, there is still a long way to go before gender equality is achieved. Research in the region shows that the levels of gender-based violence are very high and that women still bear the heaviest burden of HIV and AIDS. In education, there is still limited space for girls to participate in STEM subjects. Child marriages are a huge issue in the region and have been the focus of several campaigns, especially in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Women are still grossly under-represented in public office with none of the 15 countries having achieved the gender parity targets set out by the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. In South Africa, Gender Links is calling on would-be leaders of the ruling African National Congress to lay out their policies for equality and justice and put them to the test of public opinion before the December 2017 Congress.
The march has breathed new life into the women’s movement. But for most women’s organisations in the Global South, this is a bittersweet moment. A large number of women’s rights organisations have been forced to close or massively downsize due to recent trends in global aid. The remaining small women’s organisations are now operating on shoestring budgets. The ability of advocacy organisations to pressure governmental leaders is much weakened at a time when it is most needed to push forward the post-2015 agenda.
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