By Kayode Ketefe
The first day of this week,
March 8, 2015, is the International Women’s Day - a day set apart annually to celebrate women
and their significance in human affairs; a day specifically utilised to channel
out ideas and initiatives that will
drive programme of actions for women empowerment and to strategise on
mechanisms for protection and promotion of women’s’ rights.
Originally called
International Working Women’s Day, the day was first celebrated 106 years ago
on February 28, 1909, in the United States,
it has since been renamed IWD, albeit, the underlying focus of employing
the day to promote the expression of
appreciation , love and respect for women remains unchanged.
The day culturally
witnesses diverse forms of celebrations as, governments, organisations
charities, and numerous women’s groups around the world choose different themes
as the vision drivers for their ceremonies - different themes that invariably
speak to the realities of global and their respective domestic gender issues.
Thus, the theme for this
year, according to the International Women’s Day forum is “Make it happen!”
while the United Nations chose "Empowering Women – Empowering Humanity:
Picture It!"
The celebration of IWD this
period offers us another occasion to reflect on our gender culture and
scorecard on respect for women rights in our quest for entrenchment of
androgynous civilisation.
Yes, quite a lot has
changed since the times of our great-grandfathers when women were regarded as
inheritable chattels. But Nigerian women are still subjected to a lot of
discrimination and exploitation. They still battle with a lot of cultural
prejudices leading to subjugation and repression. The culture of domestic
violence against women is traditionally tolerated with a resultant impunity,
which actuates perpetual tendency towards escalation.
At present, there are a
number of cases in Nigerian courts featuring domestic violence with varying
degree of intensity ranging from infliction of psychological trauma, acid bath
occasioning grievous bodily harm, permanent maiming and disability or even death.
The freshest case in mind on domestic violence is the case of one Akolade
Arowolo, who has been sentenced to death by hanging for killing his banker
wife, Titilayo, on June 24, 2011.
While some progress has
been made in the area of improving employment opportunity for women, there is
still an appreciable degree of discrimination against women in the workplace.
Over 90 per cent of the
Chief Executive Officers of the Nigerian top 100 companies are men. In the
political front, women have not fared better; all what we have is snail’s speed
progress.
The present House of House
of Representatives has only 20 women out of 360 people, while the Senate has a
meager five women out of 109 senators. And, of course, not a single governor
out of our 36 governors is a woman.
Ironically, our most
important document, the 1999 Constitution itself contains some provisions that
are gender-biased. An example of explicit gender-biased provision could be gleaned from its section 26 and 29
which make differential provisions for both men and women on the issue of
acquisition and renunciation of Nigerian citizenship, with men being given
better deal that women.
Furthermore, although the
constitution has a general provision forbidding discrimination against any
person on the bases of sex and other factors it completely shies away from
making gender-specific provisions to protect women from discrimination.
An example of such specific
provisions is contained under section 3 (1) of the Ugandan constitution which
provides “Women shall be accorded full and equal dignity of the person with
men, while subsection 4 also adds “Women shall have the right to equal
treatment with men and that right shall include equal opportunities in
political economic and social activities”.
Similarly section 187 of
the South African constitution establishes a “Commission for Gender Equality”
which has the role to oversee, promote and protect gender related issues. All
these are lacking in our extant constitution.
It is very saddening that we lost another opportunity to engineer some reforms to correct these gender anomalies when a number of amendments were made to the 1999 Constitution. Also not much gain was recorded for women during the National Conference concluded last year.
In the of the light of the
above, it is high time we started working towards the actualisation of an
androgynous society where the rights of every member are respected without
recourse to irrelevant consideration of gender identity. This is not just for
the purpose of fairness as dictated by concerns for human rights; adherence to
culture of gender liberality also has proven beneficial.
Empirical researches interpreting a number of
sociological data across different climes have shown that societies where the
culture of androgyny (that is equal opportunities for both sexes) is
well-entrenched are more advanced and prosperous than societies that are
repressive and exploitative of woman.
This, of course, is not
surprising, given the fact that both male and female have been endowed with differing
talents, abilities and capacities by the providence which could well be
harnessed synergistically for optimum effect. Thus, all countries that put
women in subservient roles are unwittingly plotting their own stagnation and
underdevelopment. This should be food for thought!
Ketefe may be followed on
twitter @Ketesco
No comments:
Post a Comment