By Prim K. Tumuramye
March is a month where women are celebrated internationally. This year Uganda joined the rest of the world to celebrate women under the theme “Empowerment of Rural Women and Girls: Opportunities and Challenges.” The national celebrations were held at Busuubizi Core Primary Teachers college, Mityana District. This year’s Women’s Day will linger in many people’s memories, unfortunately not for how special it was but for the comments made by one legislator insinuating that women battering is an appropriate strategy to ‘keep women in check.’
Wife battering, no matter its intended outcomes should be condemned and treated with the contempt it deserves. We should know and appreciate that women are at the core of child upbringing and anything that affects a woman has a trickle-down effect on the life of a child. Women’s roles do not end at child bearing, but they have a major influence on the child’s formative years. In most societies, women take on the lion’s share in child upbringing, both in terms of ensuring the child is fed and providing social emotional support. This cuts across the education divide and affects both the peasant and career woman going up the corporate radar. Uganda is coming from a past, like many of the developing countries where women were kept in the back yard with little say in society on issues that ultimately affected them. Today, women are continuously being empowered and elevated to make a valuable contribution in society. Women are currently not alienated from engaging in issues like governance, church leadership, management which previously seemed a preserve for men. This is a milestone worth celebrating.
Each time a woman is empowered, we are laying a strong foundation for a child. Women are quite pivotal in children’s lives and their influence cannot be underestimated. The time and ability of women to multi task, pay detail to attention are key ingredients in a child’s growth curve. For anyone that has tasted a mother’s love, they could testify that it is incomparable. For anyone to suggest that women/mothers be subjected to beating as a way of managing them is despicable. Uganda has taken strides on eradication of corporal punishments among children, how much more should this be upheld among adults? Beating women erodes their dignity and shatters the esteem of their children. It is a form of emotional abuse to the children to know that their mothers are at risk of violence and torture. We do not want to a raise a generation that has been made to believe that differences are better solved with fist fights. How we treat the women in our lives will form lasting impressions on how the future generations will form world views about them.
It is high time society treated women with the respect they deserve, remembering that whether male or female, we are all created in God’s image. Rather than view them like low rank humans or use them as the wretched of the earth, everyone is called upon to support them. Ultimately we will have a better breed of children both in terms of upbringing and character formation. Tomorrow is looking for a child that is positive about life, able to dream big and assured that the world is a safe place to live in. The assurance of safety begins by their view of how safe the people that take care of them are. As the world takes advantage of technology and transnational interactions to advance, we should not allow to be left behind lurking in the shadows of practices that don’t build us. Undoubtedly, when women are celebrated, children are elevated.
The writer is the Public Relations Specialist at Compassion International – Uganda
