Why it will possibly be so hard to be a lady on this planet’s poorest communities

International Women’s Day is a day for not only celebrating the achievements of ladies but a likelihood to strive for gender equality. 

When we predict of gender inequality within the UK, the gender pay gap may spring to mind. Then there’s the difficulty of ladies taking over more unpaid caring roles than men. The world is ever changing, and there are various challenges that must be overcome. 

Spending time within the communities during which we work in Africa and Asia has proved an actual eye opener. It has highlighted just among the difficulties the ladies living there face. Obstacles that we within the UK won’t even consider. In fact it has made me realise just how hard it’s to be a lady living in a developing country, let alone a disabled woman.

In lots of the communities we serve the ladies are illiterate. Education just isn’t seen as a priority for ladies. Instead marriage is their only financial security. The fight for survival truly begins when a lady is diagnosed with a feared disease like leprosy. She is much more more likely to be solid out of the family home for this terribly unjust reason than if it were her husband.

Then there are issues like water collection that we within the UK take as a right. In lots of the communities where we work there isn’t a piped water. Aside from the health risks this poses, the job of fetching the water falls to the ladies. Carrying even the minimal amount of water a family needs every day is heavy. Yet it just isn’t unusual to see an elderly woman disabled by leprosy do a 5km round trip to the closest river each day.

There are so many inequalities for ladies in these communities. And it takes an incredible deal of trust and artistic considering to beat them. Even the fundamentals of curing leprosy.

Latest data from the World Health Organization shows that 40 per cent of individuals diagnosed with leprosy are women. Now, there isn’t a evidence to suggest that men usually tend to contract leprosy than women. But there are various social explanation why women are less more likely to be treated. This puts them at the next risk of developing irreversible disabilities, including blindness. 

In many societies a lady must ask her husband’s permission to see a health care provider. Then the doctor or medical examiner could also be a person, causing a lady to feel uncomfortable to be examined.

Our teams are at all times working in latest ways to encourage women to hunt prompt treatment. This includes women medical examiners carrying out leprosy screenings in women’s groups. Door to door visits are also being made at strategic times of the day when women are more likely to be home alone. 

We have just received the outcomes of a leprosy case finding project within the North West of Bangladesh. The project has been actively case finding amongst women. It proudly reported that out of the 689 people cured of leprosy in 2024, some 389 were women – bucking the worldwide trend at 56 per cent!

Gender equality is feasible – it simply takes insight, determination and revolutionary considering. Meanwhile I’ll take my inspiration from the incredible role models I actually have had the enjoyment of meeting. Such because the irrepressible Bonita and Sunitra, pictured. 

I met these two wonderful women within the leprosy colony they’ve called home for the past 40 years. They arrived inside a month of one another. Both had suffered terrible abuse and rejection by the hands of leprosy.

Their friendship is one manufactured from steel. Together they’ve survived the hardest times and most squalid living conditions. They are there for each other through thick and thin, amazingly with a smile on their faces. They are the true personification of ladies’s resilience, resourcefulness and joyous camaraderie.