Topic: 2024-Unpaid Care and Domestic Work
Country: Sierra Leone
Delegate Name: Priya Mahabir
For over two decades, women from Sierra Leone have continued to fight for equality. Currently, women spend around 2.5-2.8 times more hours unpaid and domestic than men. Of the gross domestic product (GPD) 10-39% of unpaid and domestic work goes towards the economy than other sectors. Unfortunately, since women get paid less they have to devote more time to working instead of other activities. However, in the past, global trends had prompted women to work more unpaid hours than now. At the moment, by 2050 Sierra Leone wants to have little to no difference in pay between genders. Although, in the mid-1800s Sierra Leone depended on women’s Unpaid work, it was almost essential to the economy. Now Sierra Leone has gone down significantly and has one of the lowest gender equality rates. It was 40% of the country’s GDP. West Africa used to have the highest gender equality rate in the world; women were the most affected by poverty, discrimination, and exploitation. Women to this day are affected by incredibly high amounts of poverty because all together Africa has one of the most highest and extreme poverty rates. Women face numerous amounts of different types of discrimination ranging from basic education all the way to the government and the legal system. Of women running from 15-49 around 60% of them get abused or exploited throughout Sierra Leone; sixty percent of women have experienced physical and or sexual violence.
Sierra Leonor has gotten help from the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Act for around 22 years. There is a National Gender plan and a National plan: reducing violence against women, education for women and girls, and economic empowerment of women. Sierra Leone is trying to improve its country by slowly getting rid of its’ unpaid work for women and not enforcing child labor. By the acts and laws, Sierra has and is trying to enforce they’re trying to make it easier for women to be equal. The Sexual Offense Act was to help children when they were being sexually abused. The Domestic Violence Act was to provide women protection when they had been domesticated. To increase women’s education they started to make school free and provide more scholarships. They also enforced The Girls’ Acess to Education (GATE) which works with government and communities to support women in their education.
Sierra Leone wants to prioritize gender equality and completely get rid of the burden of unpaid work. They want to make it more known around the country and create more organizations, so it’s more recognizable. They want to start gradually adding women into politics to get new ideas: access to the same education, get paid the same, and actually include women in events other than work and just overall opportunities. Gender equality has always been a struggle, since the start of time, but as of now men shouldn’t be the ones always running the country.
