COMPILED BY STAFF REPORTER
At the heart of Ethiopian cultural and religious festivals, women are anchors of these events. It goes without saying that they are mainly tasked with organizing festivities, cooking and cleaning, serving and generally undertaking the entire household chorus to ensure that the festival is planned and executed successfully, says a piece published by the Association of Women in Business (AWiB), a volunteer based organization established in 2010.
According to the study, in most cases, the work women undertake in preparation for such festivals begin weeks in advance. Buying groceries, prepping and cooking which takes on a generational task, with grandmothers, mothers and daughters all working alongside each other, taking various responsibilities.
For millions of women throughout Ethiopia, such festivities are so much more than celebrating a religious or cultural event. They are a testament to their womanhood and their societal and familial responsibilities they have been shouldering for thousands of years.
In fact, women’s responsibilities during such festivities are simply an extension of their day to day household activities. No doubt many women are put under a lot of pressure during such times. Even though women are increasingly making up the majority of the working force in Ethiopia these days, and reaching ever higher positions in their careers, the traditional stereotypes of their role as a homemaker still persists – particularly visible during festivities, the study elaborates.
“To cite some examples of the role of women in various festivities across the nation, let’s take the Gumuz ethnic group found in the North Western part of Ethiopia. The major festival celebrated in the Gumuz culture is the New Year, celebrated after the end of the rainy season. During this period women and girls are tasked with the preparation of food and serving guests during the festival, and generally maintaining the comfort of their husbands and his guests, who usually gather around eating and drinking,” it adds.
The Gumuz society is patrilineal and patrilocal. As such, power is concentrated at the hands of the man/husband. A married Gumuz woman moves to her husband’s home carries out a heavy work load taking care of him as well as her mother-in-law. In fact, women in Gumuz perform most of the key production and community functions in their respective communities beyond during festivities.
Parallel to domestic chores women are involved in almost all of the agricultural fields of work, while men perform seasonal activities that do not take much time like preparing land, charcoal, building house and so on compared to those activities performed by women. Women also work side by side with the men in farming, sharing roles in preparing the land, cultivating, sowing and harvesting.
It is evident that Ethiopian women and girls have suffered economic and socio-cultural discrimination over the years. “Just like in other traditional societies, the worth of a woman in Ethiopia is measured based on the role she plays as a wife and mother, and in some tribes women and girls have next to no value. Women’s rights are unheard of for most people. In Ethiopia, women are often assumed to simply have no rights”, as depicted in Tiruzer Ethiopia for Africa page.
More than 85 percent of Ethiopian women live in rural areas. Owing to that, they experience extreme hardship throughout their lives, doing everything from carrying heavy loads over long distances, cooking, raising children, working at home, and manually grinding corn. They have far fewer opportunities for education, employment and personal growth when compared to men, it stated.
Some changes in the way women in Ethiopia are treated can be noticed in urban areas, where they can access healthcare, employment, and education. However, even when women are employed, they still hold jobs with extremely poor pay.
Around 40 percent of Ethiopian women who are employed are part of the low-paying service sector, which consists of bars, restaurants, and hotels. Several surveys also showed that female factory workers only earn a quarter of what men usually earn for similar work.
Based on studies conducted by Oxfam America, findings showed that while women contribute significantly to the agricultural sector, there is uneven terrain between men and women in terms of access to production input, credit services, and training, education, and extension services.
Heavy and unequal care responsibilities contribute to time poverty, limited mobility and poor health and well-being. They undermine the rights of careers, limit their opportunities, capabilities and choices and often restrict them to low-skilled, irregular or informal employment.
Low incomes and irregular employment for women have knock-on effects for families, since women tend to use their income for the health, food security, education and well-being of their children (Grassi et al. 2015). For the women themselves, the impact is to undermine progress towards gender equality and to entrench a disproportionate vulnerability to poverty (Carmona 2013).
As unpaid care can restrict women’s involvement in the labor market, it also affects overall productivity, economic growth and poverty reduction. The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) analyzed data on working hours (paid and unpaid) from six countries and found that women do noticeably more work than men in all cases.
By realizing the deep challenge that most women especially in rural areas encounter, the government must undertake several women economic empowerment activities collaborating with pertinent stakeholders.
It is also important to note that denying women access to equal and quality education and other opportunities encourages gender segregation and stereotypical behavior in society. Perceptions towards gender roles are sowed by members of family and society very early on in the lives of men and women which adversely impacts the quality of the socialization process.
The Ethiopian Herald January 19/2023
