Merahit, a young women’s empowerment group, is breaking down barriers and creating a change by tackling domestic and sexual abuse, gender equality and fighting injustice.
When a friend suggested Merahit to Tequam Amare, a law student at Hawassa University, little did she know the moment would change the course of many women’s lives across Hawassa university. Two years later, Amare is the president of the women empowerment group and plays a key role in fighting for gender equality.
“Before Merahit was established, the topic of women’s rights, sexual assault in the campus and gender based voice has been ignored and was not talked about,” recounts Amare.”Mostly we face problems from girls who came from underdeveloped towns or and they weren’t exposed to much. They weren’t exposed to building their confidence. So it’s very hard for them to communicate and it’s very hard for them to say no,” explains Amare.
The group connects with female students and encourages them to speak up by offering them relevant support or referring them to appropriate organisations. However, most students are often taken advantage of by the community, campus staff and other male students. Merahit saw a need to engage with women through effective communication, offering counselling support if necessary or providing students with legal guidance to seek justice.
Amare explains that the young girls find it hard to adjust to their new environment at university and often come with traumatic experiences from their hometowns from marrying at a young age, forced marriages or having experienced gender violence.
Gender equality in Ethiopia
Research from UN women shows that 26.5% of women and girls ages 15-49 were subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months.
41.7% of legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality under the SDG indicator, with a focus on violence against women, are in place. 40.3% of women aged 20–24 were married or in a union before age 18.
Ethiopia has seen some progress as of February 2021, where women held 38.8% of seats in parliament. Parliament elected Sahle-Work Zewde as Ethiopia’s first woman president in October 2018. She promised to work hard to make gender equality a reality at her swearing-in to the largely ceremonial post.
The freshers week rumour
“Sometimes we hear rumours that someone has been raped at the campus and this rumour goes around for more than two weeks and the first year students especially feel very scared and want to go back home because of the stories they hear,” explains Amare.
“Especially in our campus where when first year students get in the campus, the same rumour always starts that a girl has been raped, she was taken to a hospital and then she passed away. We as a club try to get confirmation and get to the bottom of the story and clarify it,” says Amare.
We have tried very hard to get our voices heard and say no to things that are not right and that are bound to happen to us on campus. Our purpose is to empower women, provide support, and create awareness on issues that have been ignored,” adds Amare.
One of the biggest issues Merahit faces is the increased dropout of university rates, where women have resorted to dropping out due to the lack of resources available.
“The culture of reporting gender-based violence is very low because the victims usually feel it is their fault, it’s something they have to hide from everyone, and when they go to the campus police, they feel like their problem is going to be disregarded, and they are not going to get the help they need,” says Amare.
Mental health stigma
The pattern of silence from women carries on to mental health, which Amare believes is a huge problem “They will speak about it, and they’re usually shushed when they try to speak about these things like PMS, or suppress your feelings kind of things. So they suffer from that a lot,” she says.
Amare and her club members challenge mental health stigma by creating awareness of the topic through campaigns, events, and social media to address different mental health illnesses.
“We work closely with an organisation, they provide a psychologist for us so that they can and they give us strict screenings on mental health and when we face something that’s above our, our capacity, especially some mental health problem that needs a professional attention, we usually seek help from them,”.
Labour laws
Merahit has contributed to creating awareness of the pay gap and gender-based violence by collaborating with the International Labour Organization and offering training at Hawassa Industrial Park. Amare explains that many women are employed ” by a very low wage, and our country doesn’t have minimum wage requirements. So they’re usually taken advantage of and are treated very, very badly, and they don’t know their rights. They don’t know what they can do about it,”.
“We had a session a very short session that we tried to create awareness for them and tell them about the rights that they have and what they can do about that. It was a very successful one of our success stories that we have,”.
Empowering women
Amare wants to continue creating awareness with her team to ensure more women have a safe space to be seen and heard.
“We empowered more women to protest wrong and unfair decisions and un just things happening to them that may affect their rights or daily life at campus. Other students are feeling confident to say ‘no’,” says Amare.
“At merahit, we have a saying, “I am my sister’s keeper”, we try to create a culture of sisterhood , supporting each other and being and being there for each other and helping each other out in times of need,”.
“I am my sisters keeper”.
