Nairobi, 19 January, 2020 / 9:54 pm (ACI Africa).
Women are expected to be the primary beneficiaries of an interreligious conference in Kenya to be held at a Nairobi-based Catholic Institute of higher learning aimed at empowering them so that their voices are heard “within religious space,” one of the organizers of the event has told ACI Africa.
“With all the current issues of radicalization, violence, extremism, we are strongly convinced that women have a role to play in terms of peace building and social cohesion,” Fr. Innocent Maganya who is involved in planning for the one-day event to take place at Tangaza University College (TUC) told ACI Africa Friday, January 17.
“We hope to empower women to have a voice within the religious space and see that more and more are part of that process of reconciliation, peacebuilding and national cohesion,” Fr. Maganya, a member of the Society of the Missionaries of Africa said.
Organized under the theme, “Religious Minority Rights and (Inter-)Religious Literacy from a Women’s perspective,” the January 24 conference will focus on women who fall within the category of religious minorities particularly because “our religions are still male dominated and the role of women has not been duly appreciated,” the native of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) based in Kenya explained.
Considering “the religious space,” Fr. Maganya said, “women have always been marginalized.”