Imported User:
Gender Empowerment Network (GEN) has called on relevant government agencies to ensure that the aspects of the nation’s constitution that has to do with girl child and women are amended to meet the realities of time.
The group also criticize some content of the constitution blaming it as being gender-blind as it failed to acknowledge differences between women and men, as well as differences in women’s and men’s needs where such differences are most significant.
This is evident in the use of the pronouns “he” “him” and “his” to refer to women and men in most cases where the pronouns are not referring to the male sex exclusively.
In a communiqué issued at the end of a one-day workshop organized by Gender Empowerment Network (GEN) in collaboration with the National Council for Women Societies (NCWS) signed by Lillian Oyama, State Coordinator of Gender Empowerment Network (GEN) and made available to our correspondent yesterday said in revising the Constitution, effort should be made to ensure gender-sensitive language was used throughout the document.
Such as the expression, “in the spirit of common brotherhood” in Section 24 (c) can be changed to “in the spirit of oneness”, without losing its intended meaning but regretted that the amendment of the Constitution in 2011 should have taken into consideration some of the progress made in gender and development over the years by expunging clauses and definitions that seem to undermine such progress and the need for further advancement noting, “the definition for adulthood or being of “full age” as used in Section 29, Sub-section 4(b) of the Constitution indicating that “a ‘woman’[sic] who has married is deemed to be of full age” inadvertently legalizes child marriage”.
