Today's women

Women have been victims of injustice and discrimination. For years their work at home and contribution to the society was looked down upon. But things started to change for the better when people decided to change this. The United nations declared the year 1975 as "International Women's Year". In that same year the first international women's conference was held in Mexico city to find ways to empower women. This set the ball rolling, and since that time there has been several policies and conferences focused on this course. The year 1976-85 was declared as the decade for women by the UN. The African union also initiated the African Woman's Decade which is to run from 2010 to 2020.
The various policies and initiatives have gone a long way to help women in the society, more women now engage in economic activities and the reproductive labour of women is acknowledged world wide. This is not to say women still don't face a lot of problems in their society or inequality does not exist, it is to say that women across the world have come a long way. It is however sad that as some women are making good use of  freedoms which was fought hard for, others are engaging in activities that goes against everything being fought for.
In recent times we have seen more ladies calling themselves "boss chicks" and "slay queens" living lives that are not only promiscuous but shameful. Young girls will be sleeping with men as old as their father's in order to get money for their day to day activities. What happened to the strong, bold and independent woman? Was the fight for equality in vain?
We can't  fully blame women for this trend, our media and the society as a whole is to be blamed. We call these slay queens for interviews, we refer to them as celebrities, what about them are we celebrating? We spend hours on air talking about them meanwhile there are women out there making exploits. One third of the world's households have women as their heads and these women provide everything for their families on their own, but have you ever heard of any of them being celebrated? Is the concept of celebrities not a person who has excelled in their life and worth emulating? In my home country Ghana, we have 30.5% of household headed by women(GLSS 2014:4). Yet this is not known by many, but how can they know when the media only interviews women to ask of their favourite position during sex?
The saddest part is how women themselves bring down others without even being aware of it. For instance, a woman in an office will tagged as wicked and heartless for being strict and enforcing rules at her workplace. Such women are ridiculed by fellow women and with time they just give up such attitudes. This has led to abysmal performance of many enterprises founded by women. The society places an age cap on marriage and women who don't marry after this age go through a lot of pain, as a result of this a lot of women have given up on their dreams just to get married.
In spite of all the policies put in place to empower women, they still face a lot of challenges. We at oasis salute every woman who is doing her best to make it and encourage them never to give up.