28 Jul 2015

Leader of Opposition, Mr Duma Boko, has called for a robust National Policy on Gender and Development that will not exclude and discriminate anyone. 

When debating the policy on Monday July 14, Mr Boko said he welcomed the development of the National Policy on Gender and Development, but raised concerns that issues of sexual orientation should be looked into.

Mr Boko, also Gaborone/Bonnington North legislator, said the country was grappling with the position of confining gender concept to the binary positions of males as well as females and did not acknowledge the existence of other genders in between or around.

He said gender should not only be understood to be males and females, but should include the whole spectrum. 

He said the policy should be improved to accommodate such factors adding that conception of gender in the policy should deal with such issues.

He said some gender cultural constructs should be deconstructed adding that other considerations of gender should be looked into even if they might seem unpleasant.

He said as long as the policy did not address challenges and programme them into realisable action items, the society would continue to grapple with social ills born out of gender constructs.

Mr Boko said the policy had failed to express what had to be done and did not even appreciate what was wrong with the society. 

“The policy has failed to cease the moment to advance the society to a better understanding of gender that enables men and women to thrive to attain greatness,” he said.

Mr Boko condemned the social constructs that had led to some expectations such as the masculinity myth that men should be aggressive, agile and physically constructed.

Such myths in the present day, he said, were unrealistic and un-social.

Mr Boko said 80 per cent of men suffered empathy deficit disorder; they were unable to put emotions into words because it was unmanly.

“You can’t cry if you are a man and you cannot scream if you are in fear,” he said. 

He said suppression of emotions had made men incapable to empathy and as such the society was breeding monsters in young men and when they had been orientated to be monsters, they expressed monstrosity in domestic violence and other forms of killings.

“Why then do we act surprised, when we have socialised them into monstrosity and guilty as a society. We have failed to focus and grapple with issues of gender,” he said.

With regards to females, he said femininity myth had trained women to take locus control of their lives and place it in the hands of others.

He gave an example that seduction (leading a woman astray to the path of virtue) at any customary court had always referred to women as damaged and not men, which he said had led to women internalising their own oppression and marginalisation.

“Women have been trained to do so and trained to believe that control over their sexuality lies with somebody else. When there is seduction, it is not the woman who goes to court as the litigant, but the fathers who claim ‘of their daughters,” he said.

He said Section 27 of Matrimonial Causes Act says in an annulment of marriage, and payment of alimony, the women could claim alimony from ex-husband on divorce, but the man was not entitled by the law to claim alimony, but only an insane man could.

Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu had during presentation noted that the policy needed for a coherent and comprehensive framework to guide the different sectors and agencies involved in development.

Mr Batshu noted that the policy provided a framework for including the gender perspective in all activities of government and other sectors, as well as civil society, thereby promoting the full and equal participation of women and men in a transformative development process. ENDS