This Women’s Day, Let’s Fight for Women’s Mental Wellbeing

Women’s Day is internationally celebrated on 8th March, it serves as an opportunity to highlight and appreciate women’s achievements and struggles on a comprehensive level. On this day, Charter for Compassion aims to shed light upon a much deserving matter, women’s mental health and wellbeing.

Even though, mental health issues affect both men and women, there is a significant gender disparity found in this, where again stats show that women are predominate when it comes to being at risk for a mental health issue. WHO states that unipolar depression is predicted to be the second leading cause of global disability burden by 2020, and is twice as common in women.

It is encouraging that government of Pakistan, with support of European Union, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Royal Norwegian Embassy, is making adequate efforts to equip more women and young people with TVET skills for improving their households’ income. Undeniably, provision of TVET skills to women and youth is a key factor in economic development and there is a great need of formulating polices to extend such programmes to all young people and involve them in economic activities. In current era, it is high time that all women should be equipped with TVET skills.

Furthermore, statistics show that in Pakistan, oppression on women takes on many forms. With the much obvious existence of issues like domestic violence, right to education, honor killings etc., as a result many women suffer from severe depression, anxiety, PTSD and other mental illnesses. Majority of these women have no idea on who to approach for help or even understand what they are going through.

Therefore, Ruhbaru is working tirelessly to promote mental wellbeing for all, and on this day emphasizes on women’s mental wellbeing. It’s about time, we all collectively make conscious efforts to take care of each other, and go beyond than just the equality factor. To stand with women, we need to acknowledge, understand and accept that women are more than just statistics.