What if You Could Help Write the Constitution of Your Country?

Tanzania is in the process of reforming its Constitution. I have to confess I was completely unaware that this was going on prior to coming here. However, its proven to be an important issue and I've found myself on a steep learning curve to bring myself up to speed.

Constitution reform is an important time for the women's movement. The priorities are two-fold; first to ensure that women are full and active participants in the process of constitutional reform and second that through that participation women's rights and issues are included in the Constitution. This is an opportunity to get women's rights enshrined in the highest law of the land and no one wants to let that pass by.

Equality for Growth is part of a coalition of women's organizations who applied to submit recommendations as a special interest group for women. But the goal is not to submit our own thoughts on the Constitution. We want to collect the thoughts and input of the informal women traders we work with. Which is why this week, we held a two-day dialogue session on constitutional reform with women from our market associations and other groups including women with disabilities and women living with HIV/AIDS.

Now, I thought that a workshop on Constitution reform might be a bit of a hard sell. After all, I can't imagine a group of Canadian women taking two days off from their work to debate women's rights in the Constitution. I think its hard for most people to see the impact of the Constitution on their daily lives. And on top of that, we are asking women to leave their businesses and livelihoods for two days to participate in these discussions.

Well, these women's passion and interest would put us all to shame. These women aren't just present. They are engaged, eager to participate and demanding to be heard. Even the facilitator, who has run countless workshops on Constitution reform during the past year is astounded by these women's energy. Over the past two days I have seen women stand up and passionately defend the importance of their participation in constitutional reform and the inclusion of women's rights. One woman stood up and called for all women in Tanzania to refuse to bear children for a year as a protest against the lack of reproductive health rights. She brought the entire group to their feet cheering.

Being at workshops like this one, full of local women cheering and singing about women's rights makes me wonder what would happen if our constitution was up for reform. Would we be as passionate about the process? Would we be up there arguing that women should have 50% participation and that rights to health and childcare should be enshrined at constitutional level? I'm not certain we would. In fact, I very much suspect we would all be in desperate need of an infusion of Tanzanian spirit.

Related Items market women Overseas Work Tanzania