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The International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated March 8 every year. The Day was officially adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1975. It affords the world an opportunity to celebrate women and weigh their successes or otherwise in education, economy, culture, politics and so on.
This year, the theme was ‘DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality’. This was in consideration of the fact that almost everything now goes through a digital process in the world. According to the United Nations (UN), 37 per cent of women do not use the internet. It says though women account for nearly half of the world’s population, 259 million fewer women have access to the internet than men.
“If women are unable to access the Internet and do not feel safe online, they are unable to develop the necessary digital skills to engage in digital spaces, which diminishes their opportunities to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields. By 2050, 75 per cent of jobs will be related to STEM areas. Yet today, women hold just 22 per cent of the positions in artificial intelligence, to name just one,” the UN added.
For Nigeria, the situation is not totally bad. A woman, Funke Opeke, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MainOne, a telecom service provider based in Lagos. Another woman, Kofo Akinkugbe, is the Founder and CEO of SecureID, a smart card manufacturing company. Ms Aisha Mumuni is the Chief Digital Officer, MTN Nigeria. There are more women doing well in their digitally chosen career in Nigeria. Besides, in 2018, five girls from Regina Pacis Girls Secondary School in Onitsha, Anambra State, won the technovation contest in the United States. They beat contestants from such countries as the US, Spain, Mexico, China, Turkey, Egypt, and Uzbekistan.
In other areas of life, some of our women have excelled. Today, the seventh Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is our own Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. A former Nigeria’s Finance and Foreign Affairs Minister, Okonjo-Iweala happens to be the first African and first Nigerian woman to have ever attained that position. Also, Nigeria is blessed with the globally acclaimed writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many others who are doing wonderfully well in their professions. Elsewhere, women now lead countries and run big corporations.
Nevertheless, it is not all a rosy story. Women are still discriminated against today even from childhood. Some of them are denied access to education as they end up as hawkers. More than half of the millions of out-of-school children in Nigeria are girls. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over 1.3 million Nigerian girls drop out of school before they reach the last year of lower secondary school every year. Worldwide, about one in four girls aged 15 to 19 years is either unemployed or out of school compared to one in 10 boys of the same age. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 12 million girls are married before age 18 each year. WHO also estimates that one in five girls has experienced sexual violence globally. And 30 per cent of women have experienced sexual or physical violence in their lifetime worldwide. WHO further noted that women and girls in many parts of the world are at risks of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including HIV and cervical cancer, malnutrition, depression, and respiratory infections.
Besides, women still lag behind in politics, especially in Nigeria. In the recently held presidential and National Assembly elections, a few women made it to the National Assembly. In the governorship election coming up March 18, only two women are candidates in the election. The affirmative action of having 35 per cent of women in political appointments has not been met. The incoming administration can help to bridge this gap in Nigeria. It should also help to bridge the gap in education, jobs, economy and some others between men and women in Nigeria. There is need for empowerment of women in these areas.
Government must dismantle all the obstacles that prevent women from achieving their potential. Some of them include cultural practices like early or forced marriages, female genital mutilation, denial of education and the right of women to inheritance. The United Nations estimated that at least 60 per cent of countries still discriminate against girls’ right of inheritance. The National Assembly should enact laws that will grant women equal opportunities with men.
We congratulate Nigerian women on the occasion of the IWD. It is our hope that they should begin to assert themselves, especially in politics. They have to be more vocal and not wait to be invited to take up political positions. They should stop seeing themselves as objects to be pitied. The bottom line is education. Education liberates the mind and can catapult women to enviable positions in the world. It is time the world walked the talk on the 1995 Beijing Declaration, a comprehensive agenda for advancing the rights of women and girls.
