Achieving Gender Equality by 2030 remains an everyday goal and drive for us at UNFPA. We imagine a world where women and girls have equal access to services and opportunities as their male counterparts. A world with no FGM, Child Marriage and any form of Gender Based Violence. We long for days where girls everywhere can dream and realize those dreams. This we are hopeful to meet by 2030 through collaborative efforts with Government, Civil Society Organisations and individuals.

On 8 March 2020, we joined the rest of the world to commemorate International Women’s Day on the global theme “I am generation equality: Realising Women’s Rights” through various activities.

“Charity begins at home” they say and if you want to change the world, you must start with yourself. Inspired by this, our commemoration started with a learning session for UN staff in The Gambia hosted by the Gender Technical Group to discuss ways in which the UN is championing efforts to promote gender equality in The Gambia and how and we can fully realise it by 2030.

In The Gambia, it is widely accepted that women and girls are responsible for household chores to prepare them for marriage which affects their education and highly contributes to child marriage in the country. As the agency that chairs the UN’s Gender Technical Working Group and the UN Communications Group, UNFPA led a reversed gender roles simulation at the Greater Banjul Upper and Senior Secondary School. Through this activity, the boys in the school were tasked to cook for the girls, in order to understand what their sisters and mothers go through every day, how this affects their well being and how they can meaningfully contribute to dismantling gender roles. In addition to this, the students presented a play where students played reverse roles as a form of advocacy to deconstructing gender roles and building an equal world.

Similarly, the Country Office supported She Awards Gambia to celebrate women contributing to meaningful development and changing lives in The Gambia. As the first of its kind in The Gambia, this was a memorable night for us as it clearly showed how far we have come in advancing Gender Equality and how much further we must go to achieve it by 2030.

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Media contact:

Isatou Jallow

Communications Associate, UNFPA The Gambia

ijallow@unfpa.org