EMPOWERING WOMEN!?

Many activists have for years been advocating on the issue of empowering women. Interestingly, I have come across a form of empowering women that I had never thought of or rather prioritised. It was about empowering women with physical strength, and not with the canonical empowering of women that entails providing them intellectual capability and skills to enable them to be well equipped to overcome the global socio-economic challenges. I was really surprised after reading the internet article that claimed that President Gaddafi has been recruiting his alleged ‘virgin’ bodyguards, famously known as Amazonia Guards, as a way of empowering them '' Gaddafi believes it is empowering for women to be his bodyguards. He says, “Women should be trained for combat, so that they do not become easy prey for their enemies.”

I wonder if this type of empowering women has any positive and sustainable trickle down effect as far as the women population is concerned. I think the real enemies of the people are: poverty, ignorance, corruption etc. Thus all the efforts geared towards empowering women should be directed to addressing the fore mentioned enemies instead of providing them with 'physical power' which will only end up diverting them from their real enemies and even make them heartless.