…Mrs. Haja Sundukor Marah
One of the leading women’s rights campaigners in Sierra Leone, Mrs. Haja Sunkukor Marah has called for a collective action in empowering the women of Sierra Leone. She made the call on Tuesday 14th February at Charlihan Sisters 1st-anniversary celebration Kossoh Town Jui, Freetown as a distinguish guest speaker.
Mrs. Marah, noted that women’s empowerment should be considered as a collective responsibility to enable them live their dream of self-realization and self-fulfilment through empowerment.
She pointed out that Women’s empowerment is about promoting women’s sense of self-worth, their ability to determine their own choices, and their right to influence social change for themselves
and others. It is closely aligned with female empowerment a fundamental human right that’s also key to achieving a more peaceful, prosperous world adding that Women’s empowerment and promoting women’s rights have emerged as part of a major global movement and continue to break new ground in recent years. Days like International Women’s Day are also gaining momentum.
But despite a great deal of progress, women and girls continue to face discrimination and violence in every part of the world more particularly in Sierra Leone, she added.
Mrs Marah described women are the epitome of wealth and power. Women play an important role in society and the whole family depend on women for their daily activities. They play the role of mother, wife, homemaker, cook, teacher, friend, and Nurse all at
the same time while catering to everybody’s needs stressing that women are the hope and happiness of the home for which they need to be empowered.
She revealed that women’s empowerment has five components; Women’s sense of self-worth, their right to have and to determine their choices, their right to have access to opportunities and resources, their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home and above all above their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally.
She encouraged Charlihan Sisters and the women of Sierra Leone to raise and fight against the following: Gender Inequality, Domestic
Violence, Economic Independence, Women and Education and Women and Decision Making.
She commended the government of Sierra Leone for passing into law the 30% coater for women to hold public office but stressed that women’s empowerment will be only achieved when gender inequality will be eliminated. “We need to give equal opportunities to women for equal pay, and equal respect as equal to men” while appealed to authorities in Sierra Leone to placed women empowerment on the top agenda of every development undertaken by government.