International Day of the Girl Child is celebrated every year on the 11th of October. This day was declared as an international observance day by the United Nations and was celebrated for the first time in 2012.
The main aim of observing this day is to address the challenges faced by girls around the world, and also promote the empowerment of girls and the fulfillment of their human rights. Awareness is raised not only on the issues faced by the girls but also on what is likely to happen when those problems are solved. This way, gender equality is the target set to be achieved.
The theme of the International Day of the Girl Child is “My Voice, Our Equal Future.” Under this theme, the main idea is to make available opportunities for adolescent girls worldwide to assert their power and be change-makers. The focus will be to meet the demands to live free from gender-based violence, harmful practices, HIV and AIDS; learn new skills of the future they choose; and lead as a generation of activists accelerating social change.
Why Empower Women?
Here are a few reasons why we should empower women and gender equality.
- In this 21st century, there should not be discrimination of genders. It is a part of human rights as half of the world population is female. Every girl has equal rights to decide her future. It is the right thing to do.
- Through education, women can uplift their families. This is because they can make better decisions and lead healthier families. This means empowering women helps in empowering families which in turn helps empower communities.
- It has been found that by empowering women poverty can be reduced. Educated and empowered women to give back to their families and community. This way, poverty is reduced and there are better standards of living. The unemployment of women also reduces and eventually the economic development of the country gets improved.
- Through the involvement of women in business, many companies have shared that they can achieve business goals by creating values. Empowering women have helped many companies achieve economic and social benefits.
- Women’s leadership has helped many countries grow and also deal with adverse situations. The involvement of women in decision making addresses half of the population’s opinions and needs. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, countries led by women can efficiently contain the pandemic.
Many countries have recently come up with many ways of empowering women through education, health, and eliminating the gender pay gap. The recent example is the United Arab Emirates (UAE) bridging the gender pay gap. A new law has been passed by the UAE President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, which states “Female employees shall receive wages equal to that of males if they perform the same work or another of equal value.” Empowering women not only benefits women alone. It has mutual benefits for the community, society, and the world as a whole.
