Is tradition to blame for gender violence?

…will discarding some customs help stop the scourge

DISCARDING negative traditions is the solution for violence against women, says University of Africa Deputy Vice Chancellor Christine Mushibwe.

Making her comment on the on-going 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, Dr Mushibwe observed that if certain debilitating cultural practices were reformed, violence against women and girls would end.

The 16 Days of Activism Against GBV is an international campaign to challenge violence against women and girls. The campaign runs every year from 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to 10 December, Human Rights Day. The campaign originated from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute coordinated by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in 1991.

“This is not a call to abandon cultural traditions and assume the so-called elitist western traditions. I am urging women to use education to improve ourselves out of incapacitating cultural traditions that subjugate women in all spheres of life,” Dr Mushibwe said.

She added that education enabled a woman to know which traditions to adopt and apply to her life without stripping her of self-esteem, courage and identity.

“Those outdated and unproductive traditions that demand an acquiescent and subjugation of oneself should be done away with and replaced with traditions that allow independence of oneself. There needs to be an acceptance and understanding that both the male and female are important and ought to be respected as such,” she said.

According to her, education was an effective strategy for empowerment of women in both rural and urban areas.

She said the university’s open and distance learning programmes had emerged as a boon for women of all age groups to empower themselves.

“This gives women formal learning opportunities they would not otherwise have access to. And it helps to bridge the educational gap between males and females, an important factor to fight genderbased violence,” she said.