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BimbolaOyesola, [email protected]
Women all over the world on March 8 celebrated the International Women’s Day (IWD). This year, the theme was “Each for Equal – Creating A Gender Balanced World”.
Nigerian women were not left behind in this year’s celebration as different groups celebrated the day with fun and flair.
The Association of Nigerian Women Business Network’s celebration of the day was quite significant. As the association for the first time brought all the members under one umbrella to celebrate the day.
The association is a coalition of 40 women business and professional associations in Nigeria, with a membership of over 3,000,000 entrepreneurs who had come together with the common goal of encouraging and improving sustainable entrepreneurial development among women through research, advocacy, policy reform initiatives follow up on implementations and feedback.
In her speech at the press conference, held as part of the IWD celebration, the National Coordinator of ANWBN, Mrs. Anita Nana Okuribido, emphasized that a very proactive way to achieve the trending global campaign’s theme for the 2020 IWD was to create or build a gender-balanced world.
According to her, achieving gender balance would not just benefit women, but society as a whole.
She said: “An equal world is an enabled world. How will we help forge a gender-equal world? Celebrate women’s achievement, raise awareness against bias. Let us resolute to continuously take action for gender equality.
“Studies have found that more gender-equal societies and business communities tend to be more peaceful and prosperous.”
She added that realising the economic potential of women is the most fool-proof way for countries to boost their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
She noted that, as a network, ANWBN works on total empowerment for women, building leadership skills, access to credit, patronage of made in Nigeria goods, mentorship as well as creating a gender friendly environment for all business and professional women in Nigeria.
But this she said would not have been possible without the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE,) which established the group in 2014.
She tasked the women across the network to support in building a gender-balanced world, since they have all been mentored from childhood by their mothers and in school by their teachers and in their different lines of business by their mentors.
She said, “Balance is not just an issue for women only but a business issue in all it ramifications.
“The race is on for the gender-balanced boardroom, a gender-balanced government, gender-balanced media coverage a gender-balanced of employees, more gender-balance in wealth, gender-balanced sports coverage.
“Gender-balance is essential for economies and communities to thrive so that we can continue to increase our GDP through industrialization and SMEs. Women through the SMEs already contribute about 50% to the GDP of the country.”
She reiterated that the IWD was a global day to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of all women in the value chain of organisational development, while also marking a call to action for accelerating gender balance.
Calling for unity in the group, Okuribido said women need to take collective action and shared responsibility for driving a gender-balanced world, which is key to the success story of a very focused organisation as ANWBN.
She said: “In order to build and improve the economy and Nigeria’s GDP, women must learn to support each other and that is why ANWBN has recognised the fact that a woman with a voice is a strong woman with countless potentialities and together as focused women entrepreneurs we can remove barriers and mitigate stereotypes.”
She explained that the network has developed its National Business Agenda that will be launched next month in Abuja.
She said the association, with the support of CIPE, developed the agenda as a guide to addressing the major challenges business and professional women face, and which had constituted huge impediments to their growth and sustainability.
“Before coming up with the document, CIPE took out time to build the capacities of the members of ANWBN in different areas of organization management and market based economies in order to strengthen the capacities of members on coalition management so as to serve as effective voice of the people,” she explained.
She lamented various problems members were contending with, which cut across high incidence of insecurity, inadequate power supply and poor road network, gender inequality in governance at all levels, lack of access to finance, arbitrary and multiple taxation and lack of commodity market protection from foreigners.
She said the association has proffered practicable solutions as well as recommendations for policy makers at different concerned agencies to take decisions that will change the narrative of women owned businesses.
“This National Business Agenda is being presented to the Nigerian government as ANWBN’s contribution towards rebuilding our dear nation Nigeria. It commits the stakeholders to take all necessary positive action towards its implementation,” she said.
