Culture and tradition as reinforcers of gender-based violence in Africa.

I was consulted last week to talk about laws relating to gender-based violence in Nigeria and other African nations by a United Kingdom-based Non-Governmental Organization that focuses on fighting against Gender-Based Violence in Africa; especially Ghana and Nigeria and rehabilitating victims of gender-based violence.

It got me thinking about what is the major reinforcer(s) of gender-based violence in African societies because there have been a series of legislations prohibiting gender-based violence and providing stiffer punishments for gender-based violence offenders but it appears that we are yet to make progress in the fight against Gender-based violence in Africa.

Anyone who has taken deep thought over this topic will definitely come to the consensus that Culture and tradition is the Chief factor that gives reinforcement to gender-based violence in Africa.

It is the culture of some African societies that made the society patriarchal and it appears that there has been a conspiracy right from the inception of some societies that favours men over women and makes the girl child look less human compared to the male child.

Some societies in Africa up till this very day still practice and support the practice of Female genital mutilation, child marriage, female  Circumcision etc, this appears to be a norm in those societies and those practicing it have no idea and are in total oblivion that practices like that are gender-based violence and violence against women.

As an eye opener, when we talk about gender-based violence, it is not all about sexual violence like rape as many may have believed, gender-based violence is more encompassing and is far bigger than sexual violence like rape or physical and sexual abuse.

When a person is victimized or denied some political, economical, social, educational, or material benefits just because of his or her gender, that right there is gender-based violence. Therefore, the culture and tradition in some societies that deny the girl child the right to inherit her parent’s properties just because she is a female is gender-based violence, the unequal pay in some organizations and workplaces where a female is paid lower than what a male who is in the same cadre in that office earns is gender-based violence, the practice that shuns women from participating in politics just because she is a female is a gender-based violence, the culture that claims that training a girl child in school is a waste of resources is a gender-based violence, the practice in some societies where a girl child is forced by her family to marry an older man is a gender-based violence, the practice where a girl child is married off to a man by her family for the purpose of using her to settle off debt is gender-based violence.

The list goes on.

Legislation against gender-based violence is not enough to fight against this pandemic in Africa, the African societies, especially the rural communities need to be sensitized, they have to be taught that a girl child is in no way less of a human or in by any means lesser than the male child in comparison. Some of those cultural and traditional practices that are still reinforcing gender-based violence need to be totally expunged and abolished because as it has rightly been held by courts of law in a plethora of cases; those cultures and traditions are repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience.

Culture is the problem, it is the bane of gender-based violence in African society and until we start tackling those archaic cultures and traditions that is the only time we can make good progress in the fight against gender-based violence in Africa.