Every 8th March, women all over the world and Cameroon in particular rally to celebrate a day dedicated to women and their contribution towards social, economic, cultural, and political achievements for a better world. This 2024-year theme ” Invest in women: Accelerate Progress,” emphasized the critical need for commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment. The International Women’s Day is a reminder that gender equality is not only a human right, but also a prerequisite for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). It is a celebration of women’s resilience, strength and leadership in the face of adversity.
Beautifully dressed from the donned custom-made dresses sewn from “pagne”, specifically printed for the international women’s day, the EVIHDAF team in Cameroon, Niger and Benin, had the opportunity to benefit from a fruitful session on contraceptive acceptability (formerly hesitancy) and infertility. Facilitated by Dr Emma Kefiye, topic of the session was inspired by one of our ongoing projects’ which aims at developing a reliable and valid measure of contraceptive hesitancy in different contexts across Africa to inform the design of future interventions and policies to effectively meet the needs of women and men throughout the reproductive life cycle. It equally aims to design a social and behaviour change (SBC) intervention that supports women and couples to build agency to achieve their self-determined reproductive goals by increasing fertility-related knowledge and decreasing infertility-related stigma. During the presentation, the team explored individual, community, contextual and programmatic factors related to infertility, as well as the influence these factors have on the reproductive agency.
Open discussions and conclusions made portrayed educating and impacting a woman is equal to impacting the world. As a way of spicing the day, a delicious meal was served in honour of the mothers of humanity represented in EVIHDAF.
