EDITORIAL: Girls in science campaign will spur gender equality

Women in Science Camp for Girls (Wisci) kicked off at Gashora Girls Academy in Bugesera on Sunday. Designed to encourage more girls take on science and technology, the initiative is a boost to efforts aimed at ensuring that more girls embrace sciences as one of the ways to fight gender inequality. Attracting more girls to science disciplines is a practical approach to achieve sustainable empowerment of the girl child. While the Gashora camp will not empower all the girls in the country, it will act as a catalyst for other stakeholders to pick up the idea and keep the momentum in this effort. Rwanda’s efforts to keep girls in school at all levels will not bear fruit unless more girls embrace sciences, traditionally considered a preserve for males. Girls still face several challenges in accessing education and being able to stay in school. They form the bulk of school dropouts and traditions like male preference have seen more girls kept at home to do household chores when their male counterparts are in school. The myth that girls are a weaker sex should not be acceptable in this day and age. For national development to be achieved, the government should focus on the girl child as an equal partner in development. Just like boys, girls offering science courses can go on to become some of the best innovators and scientists. Given the same opportunity, girls have the capacity to do great things as much as boys. What’s more, empowering girls in the field of sciences would give a major lift to the country’s ambition of creating a knowledge-based economy. Let’s join hands to make this initiative a success.

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EDITORIAL: Girls in science campaign will spur gender equality