“An empowered woman raises empowered children” -Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri

The plight of indigent widows came into focus once again when Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, a lawyer and social activist, took to her Facebook page to narrate a personal experience and advise women on the need to become empowered and pursue a career regardless of the status of their husbands. It is a poignant reminder of the need for women empowerment.

For too long societal norms have relegated the woman to the home front, practically consigning her to the status of sole home-keeper to the detriment of the development of skills which would help her earn a livelihood in the absence of a husband.

She wrote:

“I am a member of a religious group that offers free legal services to the public every Sunday. Last Sunday, all our clients were women aged between 45 and 60. Two of the women wanted legal assistance to recover their husband's pension and other work-related entitlements. The others wanted financial assistance to pay school fees or solve some other pressing family problems. In sum, all the four women were poor, unemployed and obviously dependent on their husbands.

If you look around, a lot of middle-aged/older women, are either broke or struggling to make ends meet. They have no skills, no savings, no assets, and no meaningful source of livelihood. At that age, their husbands have become old and probably out of job. With their husband's age/health failing and income cut off, the women have nothing to fall back on. Their kids are grown, in secondary schools or universities, and need educational support that their parents can no longer provide.

Most women spend their productive ages only on childbearing, childcare and active membership in church programmes. They are often discouraged from making bold career moves or doing anything meaningful, but instead urged to 'take care of their families and pray'. In display of 'motherly sacrifice', 'motherly love', and 'wife materialness', they give up careers, vocations and spend their productive age on domestic chores, care-giving and religiosity. At 45-60, it seems a bit too late for many of them to enter the labour market, or start life afresh. This is the story of many women. Old, broke, unhappy, and unable to meaningfully provide for the same children they sacrificed everything for. And the children repeat the cycle of hardship and struggle.

Empower your wife, daughter, and sister today! An empowered woman raises empowered children.”

Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri is also the Founder and Executive Director of Spaces For Change, an NGO which uses rigorous research, policy analysis, community engagements in youth and gender advocacy.

Africa and Gender Equality Outlook in 2020

By Lanre Oloyede

N

igeria came a distance 128^th in the latest Global Gender Gap ranking out of 153 countries, ranking behind Rwanda, Namibia and South Africa which ranked 9^th, 12^th and 17^th respectively.

According to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index report released by the Word Economic Forum (WEF), Iceland is once again the most gender-equal country in the world for the 11th time in a row. The country has closed almost 88% of its overall gender gap, further improving upon its last year performance.

Iceland is closely followed by Norway (2nd, 84.2%), Finland (3rd, 83.2%) and Sweden (4th, 82.0%). The only African country in the top 10 is Rwanda (9th, 79.1%), which has closed 79.1% of its gender gap. Nigeria, ‘the giant of Africa,’ has only been able to close 63.5% of its gender gap. Though Nigeria is not doing too badly, there is however a lot of ground still to be covered.

On the average, the report revealed that Africa, particularly, sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind with the poorest record of global gender parity.

Although No country to date has yet achieved full gender parity, the top five countries have closed at least 80% of their gaps, and the best performer (Iceland) has closed 82% of its gap so far.

The global top ten features four Nordic countries (Iceland, 1st, Norway 2nd, Finland 3rd and Sweden 4th), one Latin American country (Nicaragua, 5th), one country from the East Asia and the Pacific region (New Zealand, 6th), three other countries from Western Europe (Ireland, 7th, Spain, 8th and Germany, 10th) and one country from Sub-Saharan Africa (Rwanda, 9th).

The report shows that on the average, the largest gender disparity is—once again—the Political Empowerment gap. Despite being the most improved dimension this year (driving the overall positive performance) only 24.7% of the global Political Empowerment gap has been closed in 2020.

The second-largest gap is on Economic Participation and Opportunity; 57.8% of this gap has been closed so far, which represents a slight step back since last year. Progress towards closing the Educational Attainment and Health and Survival gaps is more advanced: 96.1% and 95.7%, respectively, of these gaps have been closed to date, both marginally improved since last year.

With regard to the Political Empowerment subindex, 108 countries of the 149 covered in both current and last year’s editions have improved their overall scores, driven mainly by a significant increase in the number of women in parliaments compared to the last assessment.

Notably, in some countries such as Latvia, Spain and Thailand the number of women in parliament has increased substantially. Nonetheless, to date only 25% of these 35,127 global seats are occupied by women and only 21% of the 3,343 ministers are women; and in some countries, women are not represented at all. In addition, over the past 50 years, in 85 of the 153 countries covered by this report there has never been a female head of state.

In parallel to improving representation of women among political leaders, the number of women in senior roles within the Economic Participation and Opportunity dimension has also increased. Globally, 36% of senior private sector’s managers and public sector’s officials are women (about 2% higher than the figure reported last year). Despite this progress, the gap to close on this aspect remains substantial as only a handful of countries are approaching parity.

Educational Attainment gaps are relatively small on average but there are still countries where investment in women’s talent is insufficient. While in 35 countries gender parity in education has been achieved, a few developing countries have yet to close over 20% of the gaps. Ten percent of girls aged 15–24 in the world are illiterate, with a high concentration in developing countries.

Further, in these countries, education attainment is low for both girls and boys, which calls for greater investment to develop human capital in general. Even in countries where education attainment is relatively high, women’s skills are not always in line with those required to succeed in the professions of the future. In addition, they encounter barriers to employment in the most dynamic and in-demand occupations. 

Based on data from the LinkedIn platform, women are underrepresented in six of the eight micro-clusters with the highest employment growth rate (people and culture, content production, marketing, sales, specialized project managers, data and AI, engineering and cloud computing). Further, comparing where women are currently employed with the skills they possess, it turns out that there are some occupations where women are under-utilized even if they have the needed skills. Women could further contribute to many of them— including some high-tech and managerial roles—if current barriers could be addressed.

Projecting current trends into the future, the overall global gender gap will close in 99.5 years, on average, across the 107 countries covered continuously since the first edition of the report.

Lack of progress in closing the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap leads to an extension of the time it will be needed to close this gap.

At the current pace, gender gaps can potentially be closed in 54 years in Western Europe, 59 years in Latin America and the Caribbean (thanks to accelerated speed registered across some countries in the region this year), 71 and a half years in South Asia, 95 years in Sub-Saharan Africa, 107 years in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 140 years in the Middle East and North Africa, 151 years in North America (reflecting lack of progress in the region this year), and 163 years in East Asia and the Pacific. 

While the increased speed in some regions has reduced the estimated time to close gender gaps, progress remains slow and uneven across countries and regions. Policy-makers and other stakeholders need to further adopt policies and practices to accelerate this process going forward.

The Global Gender Gap Index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress over time.

Since 2006 the Global Gender Gap Index has been measuring the extent of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment) and tracking progress towards closing these gaps over time.

The rankings are designed to create global awareness of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them.

The benchmark for the ranking is hinged on 4 key criteria which are: economic, education, health and political. This provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups.

The Global Gender Gap Report groups countries into eight broad geographical groupings: East Asia and the Pacific; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Middle East and North Africa; North America; South Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Western Europe.

To be included, a country must have data available for a minimum of 12 indicators out of the 14 that compose the index.

This year’s edition of the report benchmarks 153 countries and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across and within regional peers.

Publisher’s PoV

iRise Africa represents the voice of African women who on a daily basis toil through extreme hardship to eke a living for survival; women who strive to find their voice in a male dominated milieu.

Reprehensibly, to be born a woman in Africa is to be viewed by the society as second fiddle. Culture and socialization groom the girl-child to accept an inferior statue. She naturally submits to the societal norms as inferior specie whose ultimate goal is to get married to a man and meet all his needs. In many African societies, the greatest respect a woman would earn is to be a housewife. iRise Africa has come to challenge this mentality. 

Yes, many countries and organizations have stood up against the inequality women experience in various walks of life. Several NGOs have been dedicated to campaigns leading to the creation of awareness through different strata of societies. But little progress has been recorded in terms of women inclusion in leadership positions due to poor or lack of implementation of international treaties.

For instance, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, China, 1995), is an agenda for women’s empowerment which aims at removing all the obstacles to women’s active participation in all spheres of public and private life through ensuring women a full and equal share in economic, social, cultural and political decision-making. This means that the principle of shared power and responsibility should be established between women and men at home, in the workplace, and in the wider national and international communities.

Many continents of the world have signed up to the affirmative action, however 25 years after the conference there has remained very slow improvement in the participation of women in global leadership. When we zero to Africa, women’s participation in leadership is abysmal.

A lot of improvements have been recorded in education as women now compete favorably with men in every profession. Globalization and urbanization have also made it possible for many women to access jobs in various industries.

It is now up to African women to change their mentality toward positivity in order to fight their way through male domination to a place of equality.  No one rises above her thoughts. Self-worth and self-esteem proceed from one’s thought patterns. 

Therefore African women must work on changing the concept of self as defined by African culture and tradition to a place of acceptance of equality of all humans and they should take their destiny in their hands. Women must enlarge their horizon and dream as big as they can, and strive in all areas of their choice.

Moving forward, the conversation should center around changing the woman’s mindset. African women must begin to have the ‘go get it mindset.’ Women must henceforth make themselves available for leadership positions by presenting themselves through nominations or applications, but before then, women must equip themselves with all prerequisite skills (both in leadership and industry) so much that they will be well prepared when the opportunity arrives.

iRise Africa shall be conducting researches on women issues, policy matters and skill sets necessary for mobility in various endeavors. Active conversation on those issues and more will go on here as we partner and engage relevant NGOs and state government agencies.

Welcome to a new world of the rising African woman.

Signed.

Dr. Sally ADUKWU-BOLUJOKO (OON)

Walking The Talk

Mission Statement 

iRise Africa Magazine aims to break down gender barriers and birth a women’s reorientation that will see the woman achieve her fullest potential in the society.

iRise Africa will wholesomely engage other groups with similar interests to create the synergy needed to transform words and ideas into concrete action.

Vision Statement

By creating platforms for continuing deeper, actionable conversations around women’s causes, iRise Africa Magazine will become the most viable voice for women in Africa.

Providing a deep resource base of successful Nigerian women who will provide practical enlightenment on overcoming gender-based challenges.

Positively impacting policy decisions and legislations concerning women’s rights, representation and gender justice in Nigeria and Africa.

Using education as a key tool, iRise Africa Magazine will empower the Nigerian woman to maximize her mental potentials and become global competitors. 

Welcome to iRise Africa: An Advocate For the African Woman

iRise Africa is a magazine that caters to the interests of women by creating conversations that motivate and inspire women to rise above pre-conceived societal and achieve full potential.

Through well-articulated stories from national and global figures, iRise Africa aims to elicit greater participation of women through progressive content and unique engagement styles.

Using a blog as a starting point for online interactions, iRise Africa will optimize social media as key platforms for engaging women and stakeholders around issues pertaining to the overall well-being of the Nigerian woman.

iRise Africa is a natural follow-up to the Women of Influence magazine which ran as a glossy, hard copy, monthly magazine in 2012/2013. However, with social media and other online sources hosting millions of Nigerian readers everyday, the publishers of Women of Influence warmly invites you to join us on this portal as we provoke profound conversations and host national and international figures to drink from their rich experiences on matters that pertain women.

Through heartbreaking challenges, societal limitations and age long mindsets, several women have demonstrated ability to rise above it all. As God wills, they shall graciously tell us how they did it on this platform.

Also, iRise Africa will produce policy positions, sponsor bills and collaborate in conferences on key issues concerning Nigerian women.

Welcome.