“Bridging the gender gaps between the males and the females is to ensure that all hands are on deck to encourage the full participation of the female gender in all areas of the executive, judicial and political/legislative endeavours in the country.”
The beauty of a woman lies not in her physical outlook per se, but, embedded in her mental faculty. This serves as a bulwark of her powers against all odds. No wonder the popular maxim, “Brain, not brawn, does it.”
Who runs the world? Girls! Beyoncé the popular American musician, echoed in 2011 with her hit song “Run The World.”
Does a girl-child actually run the world, or is it just a mere wishful thinking?
Causes of the widening gender gaps
One may ask, what are the factors delimiting a woman’s progress in the male-dominated society?
Several attempts have been made, and they are still ongoing, to fish out those stumbling blocks against womenfolk and put a final cessation to them.
As laws have been strengthened to wipe them out, cultural limitations and political setbacks have been removed in several communities. Yet, as they say, “not yet Uhuru”!
Girl-child education has not yet reached a desired place while numbers of out-of-school girls keep mushrooming in some local communities, despite the general notion that investing in girl’s education transforms communities, the whole nation and the entire world.
Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is aimed at putting women on a deserving pedestal and achieving gender equality. The Goal views gender equality not only a girl’s fundamental right, but “a necessary foundation for peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world”
We must explore viable ways of reducing girl-child’s agony. According to UNICEF, mothers bear the brunt of unequal responsibility for domestic chores and care giving. They may have to direct their attention to other survival means, thus, sparing little or no time at all, for child care, most especially, if they are poverty-ridden and resident in low-income communities.
Discriminatory teaching modules against a girl-child also retards her learning and skills development causing a straitjacket to her employment chances in future. Gender inequality should not be seen as limited to homes alone, it is a social factor that requires urgent attention.
How to bridge the gender gaps
According to UNICEF “girls, especially in emergency settings and in places where menstruation remains taboo, are cut off from the information and supplies they need to stay healthy and safe.”
This cultural impediment and other snags must be removed for girls to acquire the needed life skills and tower above harmful gender norms.
To this end, several non-governmental organisations and other non-state actors whose thematic focus is zero toleration for children trafficking are collaborating with NAPTIP bawling out “zero tolerance for human trafficking.”
Accordingly, NAPTIP is using its wide network to intimate the unsuspecting public from falling into the dangers inherent in human trafficking.
Slavery and force labour are repudiated in the fundamental-rights provisions of Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution and are strongly condemned therein.
Those who deals in the dastardly acts are sternly warned to desist or face full wrath of the law as they can’t blang their ways out. The law prescribes penalties for trafficking-related offences, with the applicable punishment depending on the particular offence.
Unarguably, some people fall for the deceits of trafficking agents who promise them mouthful offers or guarantee them shining future.
Without much emphasis, girls who are ported for trafficking tend to experience horrible things like loneliness, gang rape and are prone to sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV. They also lose self-pride; have post-traumatic stress, depression; anxiety disorder; hallucinations; suicide attempts; and other somatic disorders.
Nigerians are however warned to avoid being preyed on by the traffickers nor fall victim of sugar-coated mouths of their agents. While people who are trafficked become useless to themselves, they will still be unable to get that assuring future they desperately seek.
Albeit, campaigns against trafficking are continuing unabated, some factors are still militating against its success. They include grinding poverty, unemployment, parlous economy, militancy, kidnapping and others, making trafficking look like a better option than starvation hence, lots of people are at risk daily trying to escape to foreign lands by roads in search of better livelihoods.
The government is working to attenuate this scourge by creating a working committee on empowerment generation and poverty alleviation so that trafficking will be made more dishonourable and harder than hard work.
It is heartwarming, though, that most of the challenges confronting the female gender equality are gradually subsiding, and the entire world is witnessing uneven progress. Yet, the battle is far from being over.
Gleefully, it is a brighter moment for most women in politics and this is where their male counterparts are requested to lend them a helping-hand by assisting them to overcome some of the factors that stultify their movement up the political ladder and achieve their dreams of reaching the topmost office in the land.
The way to do this is for the husbands not to discourage their wives from participating in partisan politics, but rather stimulate them into going the extra miles in competing with their male-counterparts in the political arena
Well-endowed husbands should also support their spouses in politics with generous funds to encourage them to attain the apex of their political aspirations.
Nigeria is overdue to have a female president. To achieve this, there must be a conscious effort by the current male-dominated leadership of this country to support female ascension to the highest throne in the land.
Civil society organisations should also seriously involve themselves in the activities to bring about the desired goal of our women to achieve the presidency of this country.
In conclusion, it could be clearly seen that, to bridge the gender gaps between the males and the females, is to ensure that all hands are on deck to encourage the full participation of the female gender in all areas of the executive, judicial and political/legislative endeavours in the country.
Going through the annals of Nigeria’s pre and post-independent political scenarios, propelled largely by menfolk, one cannot but appreciate the commendable roles play by their feminine counterparts – women like Queen Amina of Zazzau (Zaria), Margaret Ekpo and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, among others.
Queen Aminat was a powerful monarch whose invincibility led the menfolk in military campaigns to defend their kingdoms from external influence and aggression.
Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a woman who led other Egba women in a massive protest that led to the forced abdication of the then Alake of Egbaland from the throne. She was also reputed to be the first woman to drive an automobile in Nigeria.
Margaret Ekpo from the eastern flank of the county was a formidable activist who re-awakened the womenfolk to their rights and responsibilities in politics and governance.
It is high time we brought an end to gender profiling and allow the girl-child to rule the world.
