Empowering women in West Africa |
‘Togolese women need to be educated and literate. They need to have a role in our society, and they need to be able to participate in their communities on an equal footing’.
As the chairperson of TRAX Togo, Mme Kabissa Confort says that it is vital in their work that the current inequality of women is discussed – and not just by the women themselves.
She makes the point in an assembly in Liek Kounkouog village, where more than 300 women and a smaller number of men from neighbouring villages have gathered for an annual celebration of African Women’s Day. |
 | The event has been taking place for the past three years to both mobilize local women and encourage them to plan and work together, but it also serves as a celebration of the valuable and important role that women play in local society.
Organised by Self Help Africa’s local partners, TRAX Togo, with the support of the UK Big Lottery Fund, the 2010 event has taken ‘women and leadership’ as its central theme.
Participating women's groups from outlying villages use drama, song and dance to express themselves, and introduce ‘The woman with many hands’ to their audience – as a way of illustrating the demands that are placed on women, to cook, collect water, feed their families, care for their children, |
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attend to the sick and the elderly, and much more.
‘There are a lot of areas in our culture where women are not regarded as equal,’ explains Yvette Nababe, who has been working with community groups in their preparations for ‘African Women’s Day’.
‘For example in this region it is not culturally acceptable for women to enter the granary. They must receive the grain from a man – either their husband or an elder son - even though it is the women who do much of the harvesting, mill the grain, and cook and serve it to the family,’ she says.
Yvette Nababe says that their celebration of Women’s Day is just one small part of an ongoing awareness-raising campaign, which they believe will in time lead to women receiving a fairer share of resources, being supported in education, being given a voice in decision making, and being protected from domestic violence.
‘These events are very valuable as they give women from different communities a chance to meet up and share their own stories,’ says Kabissa Confort. ‘If they learn that the challenges that they face are not unique to their own lives, it is a help in overcoming them’.
As a part of TRAX Togo’s ongoing work with women's groups around Dapaong in the Savanes Region of Northern Togo, the project has provided training in horticulture and small-business skills to 900 members of 49 different groups, and has assisted these groups in forging links with local micro-credit institutions, so that individual members can set up income-generating businesses in activities such as soap production, beer making and trading and manufacture of salt and pepper. |
