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{
    "id": 1122513,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1122513/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 330,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 434,
        "legal_name": "James Nyikal",
        "slug": "james-nyikal"
    },
    "content": "commission and move its functions to the human rights commission, the bigger loss is to do with gender issues. In terminology, you will never hear it again. What that means is that we are equating gender issues with human rights and equality issues. That is not true. It is broader than that. I think we may start by defining gender. Gender is basically a social construct in society as to the roles of the different sexes in relation to what we assign to them. This is something that changes constantly with the society. There are professions that were initially thought were for females or males. That is changing. In homes, there were roles of women and roles of men. This is completely changing, particularly with advanced technology. If you say that there are other special groups like children, when there are issues to be addressed and it is a female child, you meet totally different problems. If you then look at opportunities, for a long time, this social contract of what sexes do has obstructed the growth of women. Right now, many people see gender basically as to do with women but is not true. We have a big problem in the society today which is affecting males and we are not addressing it which this Commission should address. This is the issue of femicide; the thing of many women being killed. This is because we did not balance the boy child and girl child issue and we need to address that today. If you look at mobilisation of people even in small businesses, you will see a very clear distinction between men and women. Even if you look at distribution of jobs in offices, you see a clear distinction. These are the gender issues that need to be addressed. With the new Constitution, there has been a little loss to the gender issues, particularly, if you relate gender specifically to women. Any issues like gender mainstreaming, by looking at the Budget, how does the Budget affect issues that relate to women as members of the society? This is including provision of water for example, and dealing with women in rural areas who have to go around looking for water. These are much broader issues than just men and women. To that extent, my idea is that this is leading to further loss. When we were mainstreaming gender issues, we were asking: even in ministries, how do you streamline education so that the issues of gender are catered for? Unfortunately, it is mainly women but very soon it will become men as well. Even in the legal field, when people talk of support of a spouse during divorce, people certainly think that it is only women who should be supported. Issues are changing and we may need to find out how men should be supported during a divorce if they were not equally empowered? In my view, if we go this way I think we will lose out on the gender issues. This has been a very emotive issue even in Parliament but mainly because it has been looked at to a large extent as a women issue. There are countries…"
}