WOMEN for Change (WfC) acting executive director Lumba Siyanga has said the consequences of gender inequality such as high poverty levels and HIV have negatively affected the development process of the country.

In a message to mark International Women’s Day, which falls today, Siyanga said the disparities showed how much work needed to be done in shaping and building the Zambia people wanted by affording equal rights and opportunities to all.

“The Zambia we want is the one where women are able to enjoy their human rights and have equal opportunities as to those enjoyed by men. The basis for all this should be the inclusion of women’s rights in the Constitution, as it is the foundation for all development processes,” she said.

She congratulated the gallant women and men who had contributed to the social, economic and political development of the country despite the challenges.

Siyanga said Zambia was a signatory to a number of international instruments on gender such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) protocol on equal representation, yet no meaningful progress had been made towards achieving gender equality.

She said this was evidenced by the fact that the country still experienced high levels of gender-based violence and had less than 15 per cent women representation in Parliament.

Siyanga said women continued to be disadvantaged due to various barriers including cultural and economic factors that had led to low education levels attained by women and girls especially in rural areas.

She said most women continued to have low health status, less income, and less access to and control over resources such as land.

She said women were also burdened with reproductive and productive responsibilities.
Siyanga said this burden was as a result of socialisation processes that granted women and men roles.

“For example, care-giving is mainly perceived as a role for women, resulting into our society increasingly relying on the unpaid reproductive work of women to fill the gap left by an insufficient funding to the health sector. This additional responsibility of care-giving makes women and their children more vulnerable to poverty,” she said.

Siyanga said in rural Zambia where the majority of the population lived in poverty, pregnant women covered long distances to get to the nearest clinic resulting in some giving birth along the way, while others die before reaching the ill-equipped rural health centres or clinics.