Kumar encourages men to assist women achieve their dreams

The Minister for Local Government, Housing and Community Development, Premila Kumar has encouraged men to be that shoulder for women to lean on in order to achieve their dreams.

Ms Kumar mentioned this at the official celebrations of International Women’s Day at the Ba Town Council Hall yesterday.

The celebrations were organised and hosted by Soroptimist International Ba (SI Ba).

In her opening address, Ms Kumar’s words of encouragement came through her personal experience after having support received from the three important men in her life.

“In my life I had three important people including my mother, but these three were men in my life who stood by me making sure that I achieved what I wanted to achieve. First was my father, my father-in-law and my husband,” she said.

“Why I am sharing this story is to encourage other men to be behind women who want to pursue their dream, they should not come as an obstacle in the process because you know when you are in a household it is about equal opportunity and there are equal responsibilities by both parties.” She said women, who were mostly open about issues, were hardly heard.

“I often hear from people that women should speak out; women do speak out, but the sad thing is they are not being heard,” she said.

“Women have been speaking out from many years back the struggles started and now you can see that the gap is still there, but at least there is recognition from the Government, from the private sector and from the NGO groups.” Ms Kumar added that she did not believe in women empowerment. “I don’t believe in women empowerment, it should be the empowerment of the society and not women, we know what we are doing and we know what we want,” she added.