To Girl Power!

If you are a girl in Africa especially and able to read this you deserve a pat on the back! Or maybe you don’t even realize how your reality would have been so much more different if you lived in a different part of the same continent.

We face a lot of discrimination and inequality right from birth. For instance some cultures ululate thrice to signify the birth of a girl and five times if the new born was a boy. Society therefore openly affirms that the boy-child is more celebrated and welcomed. Various theories have been put up to explain this sharp contrast but that is not what is of interest to me! You would imagine that this open discrimination is a thing our fore-fathers had but you would be utterly shocked that even today this vice continues.

If you are very observant, you might have noticed gender insensitive remarks or comments we make every day or what the media portrays. An insurance advert comes to mind…it displays that young Kenyan girls only aspire to be teachers and policewomen! Yet the Kenyan boy child gets to be the doctor or fly the cool planes….you get my drift don’t you? I believe that everybody is entitled to be whatever they want to be. Indeed there is nothing wrong with a female teacher or policewoman but do we not feel we are limiting the Kenyan girls’ dreams?

That was just food for thought! Today we should celebrate the young women who have beaten the odds and overcome huge obstacles some which they might not have even realized and are now regarded as literate. Today I remember all the young teenage girls who are about to sit their national examinations both in Primary and Secondary School. More so I remember my mentees in Ruchu Girls High School in Murang’a.

I feel that it is our duty as young women and girls alike to change our socialization process. This may take a few years to accomplish but it can be done. If each young lady helps encourage and motivate another imagine how far girl-power can go!

So young ladies, society does not and will not define us. We cannot allow ourselves to be limited by other people’s visions and missions. We define ourselves! You may have been one of the lucky one’s to sail through school and are now self reliant…but there are many who missed out on this part of life…Once you realize this am sure you will see why it is important to give a sister a hand however small and trivial it may seem to you. Who knows she might just be a Nobel peace prize, a renowned author, a president, an ambassador…the list is limitless….

Sisterhood wishes all the candidates of 2011 the best of  luck  and great success in their examinations!