At a recently concluded conference titled "International Conference on Gender, Community and Violence
The global conference on empowering women was inaugurated by Rula Ghani, First Lady of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
The two-day conference, organized by Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia and South Asia Women's Network, witnessed the participation of representatives from Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.
The conference tried to address issues hampering women across South Asia. It called for change of mindsets to ensure sustainable impact in addressing women equality issues.
Zakia Wardak, President of the Soceity of Afghan Women in Engineering and Construction said the conference would not only connect with the South Asian countries, but also facilitate solutions for empowering women economically and for them to fight violence.
"Women are stepping outside their home. They are having education they even go abroad to get more education, woman are working and economically not only helping their family children are learning from them but it is a very small percentage so we need a bigger percentage. The only way is economically empower women through education and also through trainings like a team to help each other and support each other." Said Zakia Wardak, President of Society of Afghan women in Engineering and construction, Kabul.
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Zulaikha Rafiq, Executive Director of the Afghan Education Centre, an NGO, maintained that women continue to remain marginalized in society on many fronts. She said more needed to be done for their empowerment.
"Women are marginalized in terms of education, economic resources in terms of access to health, in terms of access to justice so there are layers and layers of violence that the woman faces. The woman in urban are is some what better off than the rural areas and also the woman towards north Tajik concentrated areas are more the society more liberal than in the Pashtun the South in east of Afghanistan. Pashtun concentrated areas are more difficult for woman to live in," said Zulaikha Rafiq (Executive Director,Afghan Education centre, Afghanistan.
The status of South Asian women is deplorable and only by changing mindsets in society, could real gender related equality and empowerment be realized.
Sheeda Hameed, Former member of National Commission for Women and Planning Commission of India, said that the conference had come up with ways to convince patriarchal societies to consider women empowerment as win-win achievement.
"The outcome of this conference, see there are many conference on women empowerment but the important thing of this conference is among the deliverables that have been stated they want to know from the findings of this conference how we are going to change the patriarchal mindset and it is a very slow process and very difficult process but I think from the experiences of the nine countries that are participating there should be a way to influence the men so that they should realize that the empowering women is not a give away to women they are giving it to themselves so it is win-win situation for both parties," said Sheeda Hameed, Former member of National Commission for women and Planning Commission of India.
War-torn Afghanistan is still in a state of conflict and it impacts women in a bigger way. Women are barred from seeking education and not allowed to have a social life.
Scholars from Nepal have said education is a major tool for empowering women in South Asia.
The recent reports of rising domestic violence in Nepal found a mention and scholars feel that only through education and a rich cultural heritage, could women be empowered and have self esteem.
Indira Shrestha, who runs an NGO named Shtrii Shakti, felt such fore give an opportunity to find long term solutions to women's issues.
"Broadly they have come up with collectively solidarity group as a pressure at the South Asia level but at the national level really working again on national level even beyond at the district level and the local level to create and start speaking with women agency for women awareness campaign and formal and non formal rapport building communication and also creating local groups who can understand and try to make a difference from the South Asia to local and national group and vis-versa conference like this would obviously be good a solidarity beyond the country," said Indira Shrestha, Chief Executive, Shtrii Shakti Nepal.
As per a United Nations Report released in 2015, Nepal has shown improvement in literacy rate but gender disparity remains a grave concern.
"Discussing about Nepal's education system, if you looked at the statistics I think it has improved dramatically over the last three decades. If you are looking at men and women probably overall literacy rate for men is about 75 percent and for women about 60 percent so that is the situation. Now eluding to the second question about is education the way for achieving gender equality as well as equity? To some extent yes, I think education is but I think education at multiple and differentiate level so one would be formal and the other would be informal, At the same time I have begun to discuss about a lot how to use our heritage and composite cultural heritage and I think lot of equality and equity issues can be resolved if you are use very rich culture that we have in Nepal and as well as in South Asia," said Deepak Dorje Tamang, Chief Executive Officer Search Nepal, Senior Researcher/Survey Research Co-ordinator
Although legal forums have taken the initiative to address gender equality, economic security, security against violence issues, most of these have not been realized as yet.
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