As the entire world commemorated the International Women’s Day on Friday, it would be opportune for us as a country to honour the women of Botswana and recognize them for their great and immensely positive contribution they are making to the development of this country.
As a newspaper, we feel morally obliged at the same time to highlight the difficult conditions under which women and, indeed, the girl child continue to endure in their daily lives.
Almost half a century since Botswana became an independent, modern state, it is heart-wrenching that many women continue to live under conditions that can only be described as feudal existence.
Not only are they the biggest victims of poverty, they also have to put up with a kind of discrimination that can only confirm what a paternalist, patriarchal and chauvinistic society we still are.
We cannot emphasise strong enough that whatever biases the women and the girl child go through, it is for no other reason other than their gender.
As a people we still have a long way to go in socializing our people, more especially the men and the boy child in changing their mindset to accept their female counterparts as equals.
This is not to say there has been no progress made over the years to break institutionalised bondages that had kept women under chains, often enforced and guaranteed by such instruments like parliament-passed laws.
Rather we are saying, whatever progress has been made has been slow, painstaking and often not significant enough as to warrant celebrations. At least not just yet!
We also have to point out that while there has been progress in other areas to improve the wellbeing of women, such progress is not by any imagination irreversible.
In our homes, at work, at school, at the churches and in other social institutions, women and the girl children still have to work twice as hard for them to earn the same recognition that is routinely given their male counterparts.
They continue to be objects of scorn, humiliation and derision.
We note with sadness that progress in the advancement of women that Botswana had made during the ten years that Festus Mogae was President of the republic seems to have been reversed in the last five years of the current administration.
Gender based violence is by far the greatest evil women have to go through simply on account of their gender.
Botswana, like many societies of the world, is still to emerge from gender-based violence against women.
As it has been said so often, while the known cases are by themselves a great source of shock, all evidence seems to suggest that it is only the tip of the iceberg.
An even greater majority of such abuses go unreported.
A way has to be found to stop the abuse of women in our families.
It is achievable.
We call on Botswana government to come up with stiffer laws to punish perpetrators of violence against women.
That way we would send home the message of just how unacceptable it is to abuse a person simply because they happen to be a woman.
