it is fundamental for survival of normal society these changes reflect in new institutional norms and discourse sea changes in the lives of women previously excluded from the corridors of power and in the new men emerging to champion gender causes they also reflect in the lives of ordinary women now claiming access to land mineral resources finance and other means of production with which to enhance their livelihoods and those of their families even so women remain the majority of the poor the dispossessed those living with hiv and aids and daily violated as a result of high levels of gender violence