The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
ITHEMBA for Girls Trust, an organisation that is aimed at empowering girls in rural schools, protecting and promoting their rights has said the Amendment of the Education Act to allow pregnant girls to continue with classes is a revolutionary step towards the advancement of education rights for girls.
Co-ordinator of the Mutare-based organisation Mrs Bethusile Tsunga said it was heart-warming to note that girls will now be afforded a chance to attend school despite having fallen pregnant.
“Section 16 of the Education Amendment Act inserts Section 68 C which prohibits exclusion from school on the basis of pregnancy. The Act gives pregnant girls the right to continue attending school to complete their education. Before this Act, pregnant girls used to be discriminated against as schools asked them to drop out and discontinue with their education and yet the boys who impregnated the girls were allowed to continue with their education. This was greatly unfair to the girls as it violated their right to education and also promoted child marriages which destined those girls to a life of perpetual poverty with no education,” she said.
Mrs Tsunga said this has led to the continued widening of the gender inequality gap in education with increasing poverty and increasing teenage pregnancies with no solution in sight.
“Now there is hope that Sustainable Development Goal Four, which demands that all girls and boys should be able to complete free primary and secondary schooling by 2030 might actually be realised. We also hope to see the gender inequality gap reduced drastically as this law comes into effect,” she said.
Mrs Tsunga said her Trust also acknowledges that Zimbabwe is experiencing an economic crisis with high inflation leading to a high cost of living, unemployment, and increased household poverty, a situation that has been worsened by the Covid-19 lockdown.
“As families struggle to put food on the table, period poverty increases for women and girls as the little money families have will go to purchasing food and not sanitary pads. That leaves them to use whatever method necessary to contain their menstrual flow and some of those methods are unhygienic that could possibly give them infections that might threaten their long-term health,” she said.
Period poverty is defined as the challenges women and girls face in managing their menstruation in a healthy and hygienic manner.
“When women and girls fail to access or to buy sanitary products, they are experiencing basic period poverty. The wider meaning of period poverty would include, women and girls failing to access water and sanitation such as private, feminine and friendly environments like toilets with lockable doors where they can change their pads in a private and dignified way, have bins to dispose of the used pads, running water basins where they can wash their hands after changing pads and even failure to access pain relief tablets for period pain explains different forms of period poverty women/girls experience every month during their cycle,” said Mrs Tsunga.
Champions for the cause of ending period poverty said there is a need for unity of organisations and a collective approach with amplified voices about menstruation with all stakeholders like the Ministries of Health and Child Care, Primary and Secondary Education and Youth, Sports and Recreation for them to come up with policies that promote and enhance a hygienic menstruation process in a holistic sense.
“It is also the responsibility of the Government to make sure that affordable sanitary products are accessible to all even in the marginalised areas through subsidising the price of sanitary pads or even making them free especially for schoolgoing girls. It is also the responsibility of the Government to make sure that women/girls access safe sanitation that promotes hygienic experiences during their menstruation.”
@NyembeziMu
