Reflecting on the worsening conditions of girls, women

INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day (IWD) presents the world with an opportunity to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. With the theme “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world,” International Women’s Day this year – marked on Monday, March 8, 2021 – celebrates the tremendous efforts by women and girls around the world in shaping a more equal future and recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. While the amazing strides women have made over the years can never be made light of, it is still important to note that these hard-fought gains for women’s rights are also currently under threat. From violence and sexual abuse to gender pay gaps and restrictive reproductive rights, women and girls continue to face obstacles in achieving equality.

While everyone is facing unprecedented challenges, women are especially bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of Covid-19. It is also the case that women are at the forefront of the battle against Covid-19, as front-line and health sector workers, as scientists, doctors and caregivers, yet they get paid 11 per cent less globally than their male counterparts. And with plummeting economic activity, women are particularly vulnerable to layoffs and loss of livelihoods. There’s no gainsaying the fact that the pandemic is rolling back many of women’s economic gains of the past decades. The tragedy in this is well summed in statistics from a recent UN Women’s report which shows that the pandemic will push 96 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, 47 million of whom are women and girls. This will bring the total number of women and girls living on USD 1.90 or less, to 435 million. In truth, we know that women are already financially fragile and the Covid-19 crisis has made them even more vulnerable.

In any case, Nigeria women and girls have had a large dose of such vulnerability in recent times, from insurgency to kidnapping, robbery, rape and many other targeted disasters. In fact, Nigeria is today the poverty capital of the world with more than sixty percent of the population experiencing abject poverty. Now coupled with the climate where a new rash of banditry and targeting of teachers and school children has directly put schools in the line of fire, insecurity has cast an even more serious pall. The situation is such that 2021 saw new attacks on previously perceived secure schools in sub urban areas. In the last few weeks, we have witnessed the kidnap of dozens of school children in Kagara, Niger State, and abduction of over 265 girls, and 70 nursing mothers amongst others in Zamfara State. Regardless of the motivation for these attacks on schools, their effect is devastating and far-reaching: parents are afraid to send their children to school, teachers are afraid to teach, and schools are shut down. Education providers, and NGOs—are forced to withdraw from insecure areas or are unable to expand to areas that desperately need them. In every respect, girls, who have much more limited access to education to begin with and who are typically the first to be pulled out of school because of insecurity, are disproportionately affected.

In the same vein, while some events of the past years such as the #MeToo movement have led to a groundswell of support for women, it is also the case that gender-based violence, which is not necessarily expected to be coterminous with Covid-19, has been on massive increase under the pandemic. This is not unrelated to the fact that the chaos and instability arising with it have left women and girls more vulnerable as quarantines and school closures become the order of the day to contain the spread of the virus. This situation has left women and adolescent girls vulnerable to coercion, exploitation and sexual abuse. According to the World Health Organisation, 35% of women around the world have already experienced some form of sexual and gender-based violence in their lifetime, with the figure skyrocketing to 70% under the pandemic setting.

The worsening situation has compounded the woes faced by girls and women, making the future shaky if not bleak: for instance, virtually every world leader has committed to achieving gender equality by 2030 but it would look like we cannot see real, sufficient steps to make this happen from any of them as the figures do not bear out any hope. Globally 119 countries have never had a woman leader as a Head of State or Government. At the current rate of progress, gender parity will not be reached in parliaments before 2063, in ministerial positions before 2077 and in the highest positions of power before 2150. And just when we are starting to think that the media has risen to its role in advancing gender parity by creating gender-sensitive and gender-transformative content to break gender stereotypes women particularly face in the workplace and when they take on leadership positions, we witnessed a spirit crippling headline from a Swiss newspaper that reads… ‘’This Grandmother will become the boss of the WTO.” “Grandmother” was all that the newspaper could qualify Ngozi Okonjo Iweala with despite her widely celebrated credentials and achievements. And the major thing about this depressing headline is not just about the depth of the rot in society on account of the misogynistic and sexist remark and feeling directed at NOI here, but is really about the deleterious consequence such stereotypical gender portrayals and clear gender segregation by the media continue to have on a lot of  girls and women.

At things are, it is not difficult to know that majority of people fighting for girls and women are rightly worried about the threats to women’s rights happening now at a global scale. These are really trying times, as our world becomes more unpredictable and chaotic with the rights of women and girls being reduced, restricted and reversed. Against this background, it becomes easy to find anger, despair and a fear that we’re rolling back instead of progressing and pressing forward toward a more gender equal world. Yet, we can’t lose hope as even Covid-19 pandemic, in spite of all its restrictions and grave negative effect on life and living, has taught us something undeniable: women’s full and effective participation and leadership in all areas of life has been the mainstay of the society under the pandemic and it is this blossoming of the potentials of girls and women and their empowerment and emancipation that would drive progress for everyone in the society. And to be sure, girls and women are activating and organizing like never before as they are seizing even the slightest opportunities available under the current worsening conditions to strive and agitate for, proclaim and tell us: a more gender-equal world is possible and our generation must work to achieve it.

• Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria.

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