By Bida Elly David
The First Deputy Speaker for the Reconstituted Transitional National Legislative Assembly has reiterated full rights of women over ownership and access to resources and wealth to live an independent and meaningful life.
He said this statement during the national Annual women conference which was attended by a number of female representatives from different institutions in Juba.
The major aim of the conference was strengthening women towards participating in creating income generating activities and how crucial it would help them to sustain them from high level of dependency.
South Sudan among other countries across the globe is one of the nations that prioritizes its culture and traditional norms. The country has communities that renders powers to men as heads of the families exempting women from ownership and management of assets whether for commercial or subsistence use.
According to facts finding reports, some traditions look at women as elements for propagating children in the family without putting into consideration the best skills these women would have attained, used to generate resources to back-up the family burden.
Women in some communities in South Sudan undergo serious underestimation due to passive traditional norms and taboos that dictated their rights to access and exercise their skills to transform the society into a better place.
Recently, a group of women told No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper that the rate of marriage turnover in South Sudan was high due to the constant mistreatment of women by their husbands driven from family influence.
They said that most men have become irresponsible and some communities still believed in their old traditions where female rights have been exempted.
Speaking during the function, Nathaniel Oyet, the First Deputy Speaker for the Transitional National Legislative Assembly underscored that women nationwide can play bigger roles in the areas of leadership, politics, business and other sectors once given the chance.
He challenged the society to prioritize inclusion of women in all sectors of decision making and management of family resources for the glory and prosperity of the community.
Nathaniel further added that the physiological and the morphological improvement of a female being is determined by the level of her disposable income.
“I challenge the notion of women empowerment limited to social and political sphere. Women must have access to resources and wealth in order to live a more independent and meaningful life. The physiological and physical outlook of a woman automatically improves with an increase in the level of her economic worth,” he said. In continuation, Rt. Hon. Nathaniel reiterated the need for the society to abstain from using women as tools or liability rather than subjecting them to generate much income for supporting their families.