https://reasonstobecheerful.world/awra-amba-gender-equality/
"It doesn’t take long to observe that the community of Awra Amba is unlike any
other place in Ethiopia — or even the rest of the world.
Here in the breathtaking highlands of northern Ethiopia, not far from the fresh
waters of Lake Tana, the largest in the east African nation, an important
societal experiment has been underway for the last half century.
Across the lush terrain, women guide oxen to plough the fields. Men sit in
their humble adobe homes, sometimes tending to babies or spinning cotton. Here,
the gender equality of labor is both the law as well as, seemingly, the genuine
reality.
In Awra Amba, the division of labor — from farming to weaving or caring for
children or elderly — must be equal between sexes, according to the community’s
rules.
“Doing a ‘women’s job’ does not change my maleness — it changes my ignorance,”
goes one of the many egalitarian sayings that the male residents have chosen to
live by.
What might seem like simple logic, such as the fact that men here are
accountable for doing half the housework, is in fact an extremely rare
phenomenon globally. A study of 190 economies around the world by the World
Bank in March 2024 found that women spend 2.4 more hours a day on unpaid care
work than men, much of it on child care. It also found that women earn just
$0.77 for every $1 paid to men. “No country provides equal opportunity for
women,” concluded the damning report.
Yet Awra Amba, where about 600 residents live together in a picturesque village
surrounded by rolling verdant hills, is a vision of a world of equal work."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
