The idea of the equality of men and women has engaged the human race from time immemorial, but only in the last 150 years did it begin to gain clarity and last week, the whole world was agog in celebration of the annual International Women’s Day. It went beyond lip service or gentlemanly pandering or acting civilised. Whereas it took thousands of years to embrace the reality that it is not a man’s world, yet for centuries, women were made to go through many irrational discriminative practices.
The American Revolution, for instance, was essentially for justice, equality and liberty, yet it took 144 years for women to get the vote, and 230 years before a woman was nominated by a major party with a good chance of becoming president.
The UN Women computed the percentage of women 15-49 married or in union who make their own informed decisions regarding sexual relationships, contraceptives use and healthcare. They discovered wide disparities such as 71.3 per cent for Europe, 70.8 per cent for the Americas and the Caribbean, 68.5 per cent for Asia, 60.9 per cent for Southern Africa, 49 per cent for East Africa, 29.6 per cent for West Africa and 26.8 for Central Africa. Even so, it was shocking to discover that in the year 2000 only 13.2 per cent of the world’s parliament and high office holders were women. The figure rose in 2017 to 23.4 per cent. Yet in most countries, half the electorate was women.
So much credit must go to the United Nations which has championed the cause and created institutions and platforms to sensitise the world and keep the agenda under constant view, including the International Women’s Year which was first introduced by the UN in 1979. It is apparent from the figures that West Africa is indeed lagging in these matters, and the chief culprit is Nigeria because of our overwhelming influence in what happens in the region.
To begin with, there are only 27 women in Nigeria’s National Assembly of 469 members. It is a scandal and a shame. It means that Nigeria holds one of the worst records in the world, where women constitute a paltry 7.8 per cent of the parliament. Yet it is scarcely a surprise because the National Assembly is emblematic of everything that ails the Nigerian nation, from extreme inequality to brazen corruption.
And so it has been for many years. The only way to get more women into the National Assembly is the quota system without discounting its moral hazards and systemic difficulties. But there is no doubt that Nigeria must find a way to get in more women into the decision-making system of the nation, 7.8 per cent is intolerable. President Muhammadu Buhari is promising to take in more women into his government. But there is a limit to the number of ministers and heads of parastatals he can hire. The greatest favour he can do to the country given the dim state of affairs is to push for a reform of the system and devise a credible and systemic means to inject many more women so they can constitute between 35 and 45 per cent of the National Assembly, corporate leadership, political and administrative leadership at both the state and municipal levels.
It is so obvious why the country needs to mobilise and fully enlist its women. The world has since found that any society or community discriminating against its womenfolk is simply cutting its nose to spite its face. As women constitute the pillars of families, so do they constitute the pillars of societies. Their special gifts and talents are unique to them.
In Northern European countries where their utility is realised and employed to the fullest, it has been discovered that when there are equal numbers of men and women in a board, the chances of making an error is very limited. Firms that have equal male and female boards have been proven to perform much better as a team, more profitably as a corporate entity, more ethically, more equitably and more humanely.
We have found through the years that the so-called culturally-inspired backward practices like female genital mutilation, child marriage and the deprivation of females of inheritance, have by themselves proven how deleterious they are to our society’s progress. The education of girls has proven how wrong it was in earlier times to pull the girl out of school to make way for the boy. To educate a girl is to educate a family. To lift Nigerian women is to lift Nigeria.