Source: Daily News Tanzania
NOTHING makes the male population defensive or scared than the mention of ‘women rights’ ‘gender equality,’ or male chauvinism.
But last weekend, the first ever ‘women empowerment’ initiative that also includes males has sailed in Arusha with an aim of creating mutual family understanding while also advocating gender equality.
“In the past all women and gender oriented efforts were being done specifically with just women in mind and leaving men feeling left out and frustrated and this sometimes broke families; this time we are having a hybrid approach,” observed many of the participants who attended the launch here over the weekend.
Ms Gladys Richard is the founder and Executive Director for the new ‘Male Advocacy for Gender Equality,’ known simply as MAFGE.
She is on view that while women get empowered, their husbands or other male family members are left out and fail to understand their position.
“Many organizations have failed to look into the other side of the coin; leaving the men out of the missions only serve to make women to be even less understood when trying to apply what we teach them,” Ms Richard maintained.
“A number of family development projects that women have been taught to implement have failed to take off because their partners at home either did not understand them all felt they were being executed to belittle them thus worked to sabotage them,” she pointed out.
MAFGE’s team of four personnel, according to Ms Richards, will also work on children oriented projects, hatch series of ‘equality for all’ missions and deal with the youth through the ‘Project Kijana’ targeting schools and colleges.
The team of four include Ms Esther Lal ly, Ms Magdalena Masanja, Eligrania Robert and the founder, Ms Richard will be working on educate the mass on the new women empowerment, without excluding men, initiative. There is no institution which just works with females while snubbing men can ever succeed.
“The only way to dilute male superiority is by ensuring that they are also being involved, “ he said. There were also students, among them Ms Mariam Ramadhan, from Meru Secondary School at Form Four and is on view that, if gender equality and women rights could be taught right from school level then most youth would grow to understand the issue better.
Mariam reminded that each woman had her own problems, needs and understanding thus people who are sent out to administer knowledge should make sure they understood this. Other participants during the launch included Police officers from gender desks, lawyers, Secondary School Students, bankers and local residents.
By HAZLA OMAR IN ARUSHA