Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA) are serious Public Health problems that should be condemned with all seriousness and women especially empowered mentally and economically to liberate us from these unfortunate occurrences
In addition to empowering women and girls to be independent, men especially young boys should be taught early in life to respect and value their female counterpart, so they grow up with the mentality that their female counterparts must be valued and respected and not to be treated as a “thing” or an inferior being in order to stop this canker
Some of our sociocultural beliefs and practices also seem to promote and fuel GBV/IPA to the extent that some men see women as part of their properties (“thing”) once they pay your bride price
Such mentality can only be changed by deliberately teaching our young boys early in life to appreciate, respect and value girls/women, and we must be deliberate about it
After Beijing conference, women are doing well, but most have still not been able to break the glass roof because of our culture of Male dominance, and most men still have problems with women leading, or they working under women as their heads. Because of that, we have to get to that point where there is a paradigm shift in the way most men value and see women. To achieve that we have to be deliberate about it, by target educating men especially young boys to respect and value girls/women. Let’s all get involve and deliberately teach/train our young boys at home, churches, schools and in our communities to value and respect girls/women as well as empowering women/girls mentally and economically to be independent and liberated.
We definitely need a collective effort to stop/prevent Gender Based Violence/Intimate Partner Abuse
