Youth Advocacy Network: Teaching Multimedia in Cameroon

1. What is gender quality and how can this improve living conditions in our community and around the world?

2. Why is it important for a women to be empowered and able to make her own decisions?

3. What are some other ways men, women, girls and boys around the world can advocate for women?

Women are mothers of the world and supposed to be considered as the most important people in the world today because there is no thing like a mothers love for the child. If women are allowed to express themselves as men do in the world today that is gender equality. We will see a great impact in the worlds development. I there was gender equality in the society and around the world today, there will be low rate of infant mortality since women would be seen to school and they will be taught on how to bring up their children and how to care for them. Reduction in prostitution since women will be educated so they will know the implications of prostitution like contraction of diseases such as AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases. And the rate which women are being depressed and so they will take care of themselves and their children. The women's talents would be exposed which will improve on the income of the country. Like they say, “What a man can do a woman can do better.”. And it is true anywhere in the world today. Gender quality will leave do an increase in women’s life span, reduce the rate of orphans on the streets and also the rate of teenage pregnancy since women would have the right of education like men and also reduce the world’s starvation especially in Asia and Africa. Also, rape victims will be able to defend themselves and it will reduce the rate of women being raped every day throughout the world.

Women face a lot of difficulties as being considered or accepted in the society today as being important even though they have ideas that change the world and impact their families. Women should be appreciated and empowered because they have a lot to offer to the world to make it a better place. If women are empowered and allowed to make their own decisions in education and marriages respectively they will gain knowledge on how to take care of their children, be independent and to contribute to the development of the country. And they will be happy about themselves and it will not only make the family happy but the world for they say, “When the mother is happy the whole family will be happy”. Some women who have been empowered not only in Africa but throughout the world believe that women should have a say in the world today like the presidents of some African counties such as Ruth Sando Perry the first African lady president in Liberia and Joyce Banda the president of Malawi. Both are great examples of empowered women who have ruled their counties very well showing that women are good leaders if they are given a chance. When women are empowered they can change who their children become by encouraging them to fight for their rights and their future because women change the thinking capacities of their children. So, women should be empowered because the growth of the world depends on them.

In order to change the mentality of the society about women and also to advocate for women in the world in the world today as men of the society is to appreciate and give them a change to express themselves in anyway they can. Give them the respect they deserve because we were brought into this world by a woman and as boys and girls we should give them respect and honor them by all means that we can. Because not for them we wouldn’t be in the world today.

“Women have more and more to offer the world – more than we think. We should just give them a chance to express themselves and we shall see the outcome of it all. “

-Muluh Victory

Chosen Essay Questions:

1. What is gender quality and how can this improve living conditions in our community and around the world?

2. Why is it important for a women to be empowered and able to make her own decisions?

3.  What are the biggest struggles for the women/girls of Cameroon and how can this be overcome?

When people talk of gender equality they will think of gender inequality because the rights of both male and female children are not the same. With gender equality in our community many things will be changed. The living condition will be change because both the children will have right over their properties and education to both female and male children. It will reduce the rate of unemployment, arm robbery, prostitution and unwanted pregnancy in our community because they will be educated and have right over their properties. It would improve the living standards of the community and the world.

It is good for a woman to be empowered because there are some houses where the women has no say in what they do. She will take instructions and carry it out carefully and well cone. The women has to be empowered because she has to know her rights and duties. Some of the rights and duties include: the right to own properties, the right to decide what she wants, education, government facilities and she has the right to work in the public services. Her duties are to take care of her children, to cook for her family, to help the man in bringing up the children and so on. The woman also has the right to make her own decisions because there are some things one to the woman which does not please her like forced child bearing, rape, killing them as sacrifices, forced marriages and forced prostitution. Women wan to make decisions on their own. She will make decisions that please her so that she will not accuse anyone or say someone is that cause of her misfortune. The woman will know the amount of children to have. They should also make decisions to the type of job they want to have and where she wants to go and who she wants to marry.

The biggest struggle in Cameroon in violence, disrespect, being uneducated and unemployment. When the women does not want to have sex, they will use violence on her to have it. Some men would even beat them up because they have refused to do it. Like the women in Zimbabwe where when she gave birth, her husband beat her up saying the child was not his and finally he beat her up with and axe making the woman to leave the house. The husband also choked her daughter man time cause she was a woman. The women is also disrespected in general because they are women. Some are insulted but everyone with children and adults which is not good.

The women being uneducated because they will say woman’s place is in the kitchen. Like in some areas they will say “they are educating the women for what?” if she would get married to another family and it will be the husband who controls the money and her.

There is a high rate of unemployment because the women are not educate and so they cannot get a job and this may lead to poverty and proposition.

"Some possible solutions are: creating seminars for women; allowing women to have education and employment; allowing the women to make their own decisions; allowing the women to own property; the women should be respected and also; people should not inflict violence on them."

-Henry Ekema (pictured below)



To see Buea Town's winning essay, click here!