THE CITIZEN (editorial)
One of Africa’s foremost educationists of the last century, Ghanaian Dr Kwegyir Aggrey (1875 – 1927) aptly said: “If you educate a boy, you simply educate an individual, but when you educate a girl you educate a whole society.”
Indeed, you don’t get a true picture of a whole community’s level of social and economic progress by looking at the number of men who are doing well, for that would be misleading.
Rather, it is women’s status that gives the real measure of a people’s cultural and economic wellbeing, since these have been, throughout human history, the underdogs. That, even when regions and political systems purported there was equality before God and the Law.
When there are limited resources in a household, parents would take the son to school at the expense of the daughter, even when the latter were to demonstrate a higher intellectual gift. In Tanzania, there is a tendency to believe gender equity is a non-issue since there are “a lot of faces” in the current political leadership.
It might be consoling that we have, for instance, 124 MPs (102 Special Seats and 20 who are directly elected) in a House of about 350 than, say, Kenya with 22 (15 elected and 7 nominated) in a House 0f 262. But then, we compare quite poorly with Rwanda where 48.8 per cent of the MPs are women!
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