• Abiola Afolabi Photo: Sun News Publishing

Woman of the Sun Index

March is a very important month for women. It is the time when Americans celebrate Women’s History Month and the International Women’s Day in Nigeria. This year, the 52nd edition of the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) holds in New York from February 25 to 07 March. The CSW is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, dedicated exclusively to the advancement of women.

Every year, representatives of UN member states gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equity, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equity and the advancement of women worldwide.

This Commision was established by ECOSOC resolution 11 (1) of 21 June 1946 with the aim to prepare reports to the council on promoting women’s rights in political, economic, civil, social and educational fields. In addition the commission makes recommendations to the council about urgent problems requiring immediate attention in the fields of women’s rights.

NGOs in the country have been collaborating to identify important issues to deliberate upon. In their outcome, women have been working assiduously to promote gender equality and support women to articulate their needs and demands.

For Abiola Akiyode Afolabi of the Women’s Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC). "Women’s access to economic opportunities is often limited by factors such as the multiple roles they play, the non negotiation of those roles in workplace policy and the steep conditions for accessing loans and micro credit.

Since they make up almost half of the country’s population, their exclusion in these areas means that close to one half of the country’s potential is left largely untapped."
Afolabi adds: "In general there is a slight overall increase in the percentage of female political office holders at both appointive and elective levels.

This increase is, however, still very far from the 30 % recommended by policy frameworks such as the Platform for Action, and the National Gender Policy".

The most recently available national MDG progress report also came under the scrutiny of the group. Here the data available states that the gross enrolment ratio for boys has remained consistently higher than that of girls by over 10 per cent. At the level of secondary enrolment, girls have a much higher drop out rate such that by terminal class only 48.83 per cent reach senior secondary school.

Nkechi Nwankwo, the Regional Gender Adviser of Oxfam covering all the countries of the West Africa region facilitated meetings by women groups in the country. She tells you more about her organization: "Our main focus areas are promoting women’s leadership, upholding women’s rights through the AU protocol. I am supporting countries to do gender mainstreaming of all the programs. We make sure that our programs are mainstreamed using international conventions."

In addition, Oxfam has a lot of publications on gender and these are also used to promote gender issues and views. "Promoting gender is a political issue. In addition, working with partners on the CSW program was problematic because of the diverse area of the region. The infrastructure is also not very supportive. The women are disadvantaged in the area of income and wealth. The indicators include the number of women in parliament and maternal mortality rate.

"It is busy supporting all the countries. But it is fun because you see the changes. The vibrancy of women organizations in the region is quite encouraging. There are so many opportunities but we also have diversity in the culture. In Senegal the people are very peaceable, crime is low and electricity is constant."