As the world celebrates International Women’s Day today, a day which has been set aside by the United Nations to look at the plight of women, we join the international community in celebrating the achievements of women.
As we celebrate this day, we salute all Gambian women for their achievements in the struggle for the emancipation of women.
Gambian women have a lot to celebrate and many other things overcome in order to maximise their full potential.
As we stated before in this and other pages of this paper, Gambian women have indeed gone far, as compared to their counterparts in other African countries.
We have women holding key government positions across the country, though men outnumbered them in these positions.
However, the Gambian women still face many challenges, such as domestic violence, rape, lack of access to soft loans, lack of enough proper farming implements, and above all, poverty.
A lot of Gambian women just like others in many parts of the world have experienced physical or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime.
Our women, especially young girls, have also experienced forced and arranged marriages, practices which are still prevalent in other parts of the continent.
We must make more efforts to address domestic violence and violence against women.
Women empowerment must remain a key priority, only if we put serious concern on the development of the women folk.
On this important day, we applaud all women rights activists and men working for the well-being of women.
Finally, we wish all women a happy International Women’s Day!