Nigerian women yesterday join their counterparts the world over to commemorate the yearly International Women’s Day (IWD), the significance of which is never lost on the toiling women, their families, human rights movements and activists. Expectedly, it was a day of reflections on the plight of women as they struggle against discrimination, abuse, economic insecurity and wellbeing. IWD provided an opportunity for women to revisit the dispiriting conditions in which a greater percentage of women toil and contemplate what the future portends for the country and its women. It is an obvious fact that women all over the world face a number of difficulties. The yearly acknowledgment of the plight of women in the form of IWD is a manifestation of the increasing awareness of the burden that Nigerian women carry, many of which are historical and culturally spawned. The enormous challenges notwithstanding, the Nigerian woman still deserves to be celebrated for holding aloft the banner of selfless contributions to the development of a patriarchal nation despite the little recognition she is accorded, especially by the opportunists in government parading as leaders, who have cared less about women’s collective welfare.
Times have changed though. In the past decade or so, the average Nigerian woman’s interest in open air parades across the country on such occasions seems to have waned considerably, and understandably so, given the Covid-19 pandemic. No one will deny this for, in Nigeria, so male-dominated, both gender-based discrimination against women and gender-blind public policies are common. And for these, society pays high tangible and intangible costs such as the underutilization of a large female human resource, and the attendant economic and other losses. So, gender equity, meaning impartiality in the allocation of opportunities and resources, and gender equality, meaning the accordance of equal value to the natural similarities and differences between men and women are absolutely worthy and worthwhile causes.
IWD is a global day celebrating the socio-economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity and inclusion in the nation’s decision-making process. The Day was first celebrated by the UN in 1975. Then in December 1977, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a UN Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by member states, in accordance with their historical and national traditions. There was a consensus that society must work in concert to protect women, including young girls and aged women, from sexual violation and abuse that have become rampant in recent times.
A glance at the records of human rights violation in Nigeria easily reveals the level of violation that women face. This range from rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, sexual harassment in the work place, negative cultural practices relating to widowhood, circumcision, denial of access to land and denial of inheritance rights. These combine with other societal discrimination/neglect, which can be gauged in the low-level of literacy, absence of prenatal care, high mortality rate resulting from child-bearing, and absence of opportunities for self-actualization. The hard reality that women face today is aggravated by the fact that about 60% of sub-Saharan African women are infected by HIV/AIDS. That women are underrepresented, according to a recent UN Secretary General’s report, is reflected in the fact that women head government only in 22 countries while only 24.9% of national parliamentarians are women. The glass ceiling, according to the UNDP, “is perhaps most apparent for women in areas that challenge hard power. In politics, men and women vote at similar rates, but less than one quarter of parliamentary seats globally are held by women. This isn’t just a gender gap. It’s a power gap.”
This is particularly more so in Nigeria that is traditionally patriarchal. Nothing perhaps speaks to gender imbalance in the country than the number of representations in the various arms of government both in the states and at the federal level. Since the commencement of the 4th Republic in 1999 (22 years ago), the number of elected women in both the executive and legislative arms of government has been abysmally low. At the legislative level both at federal and the component states, the number of elected legislators is less than 5%. This contrasts with Rwanda, where women in parliament account for 61.3% in the Lower House and 38.5% in the Upper House. This makes Rwanda the country with the highest representation of women in parliament out of 192 countries presented on the global database. At the level of the executive, no woman has ever been elected the president of Nigeria or governor of any state. We have had a female Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) who left a worthy legacy in the judiciary. Despite these tales of misery, women still carry the triple burden of being mother, partner and worker.
Even as women should, rightfully, aspire to the leadership positions, they must justly and justifiably earn their place at the top. And, to prove they are a better alternative to men, they need to do things not just differently but evidently better. Furthermore, leadership roles demand only the best hands. It would be unwise and unsafe to grant opportunities to people only in order to fill a quota. This country has done this so far and its sorry state is evidence of a wrong-heeded approach. Of course women deserve equal access with men to opportunities but only the best women are good enough for Nigeria. The point needs to be made that official and non-official measures to mainstream women should not lead to reverse discrimination against men.
Beyond the rhetoric and catalogue of the problems confronting women, the challenge is to stop discrimination against women who constitute more than half of the global population. International organisations have produced several benchmarks for mainstreaming opportunities for women in ways that leverage equal status with men. The Beijing Affirmative principle, which prescribes a sizeable percentage for women in decision-making processes, is one. Indeed, some countries in Africa have met the Beijing benchmark, while others have surpassed it. South Africa, Mauritius and Uganda are African countries that have met the Beijing standard. Recently, Africa has begun to have its women elected as presidents of sovereign states. Liberia and Malawi are examples of such stride and thus indicate future prospect of equal opportunities for African women.
The 1979 Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly is the international bill of rights for women; it provides an international framework to fight discrimination against women. Nigeria ratified this instrument in 1985 without conditions. The question is to what extent has Nigeria lived up to its obligations? By acceding to the Convention, countries are expected to undertake certain obligations such as incorporating the principle of equality of men and women into legal system, abolition of all discriminatory laws, while prohibiting discrimination against women. By no means have we achieved these goals, while the slow performance of the national economy is itself a clog to realizing many of the grandiose programs and future projections. Nevertheless, public institutions will need more to articulate a comprehensive response to the plight of women by creating the enabling legal framework and equal opportunity measures within the entire production relations in our society. Law enforcement agencies have a special challenge to bring to book those who violate womanhood through rape and other sexual abuse. Only through strict sanctions, as well as public enlightenment, can such sordid crime against women be curbed.
To empower the nearly half of Nigeria’s population who are women in positive ways as are possible – education, political participation, financial support, knowledge and skill acquisition – will raise their individual productivity and collective contributions to the nation and also improve the quality of societal wellbeing. Indeed, the 2006 National Gender Policy (NGP) was instituted with the expressed goal of “building a just society devoid of discrimination, harness the full potential of all social groups regardless of sex, or circumstance, promote the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and protect the health, social, economic, and political wellbeing of all citizens in order to achieve equitable rapid economic growth, evolve an evidence-based planning and governance system, where human, social, financial, and technological resources are efficiently and effectively deployed for sustainable development.”
It is in cognizance of this that UN Economic and Social Council explicitly defined gender mainstreaming as “the process of assessing the implications for women and men, of any planned action including legislations, policies and programs, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s, as well as men’s concerns an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic, and societal spheres so that women and men can benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.” As Nigerians reflect on the plight of women this year, our country needs to move beyond “connecting the girls and inspiring futures” to connecting and inspiring the entire womanhood. Critical stakeholders in Nigeria must also come to terms with the fact that our women deserve a better deal. They have proven wrong the erroneous notion imposed by patriarchy that women are inferior to men while gender equality is not just a human rights issue, it is essential for the achievement of sustainable development and a peaceful, prosperous Nigeria.
