‘Stopping gender discrimination/inequality against women’

The template for the assessment of commonly observed yardsticks reckoned with in the African society upon which standard of evaluation that defines, censors and measures women›s worth, rights and values within the fabrics of our socio-cultural settings is based and established on the altar of series of erroneous doctrines and factors.

These doctrines and factors thereafter brewed anti-women philosophical thoughts that nurtured gender discrimination and bias against women on the podium of either our spiritual or secular spheres.

Thus, these established threads, forming the conceptual frameworks of the societal ethics and beliefs are orchestrated by such factors as biological, physiological or socio-cultural narratives enshrined and enforced by laws, customs and traditions within the scope of our existence in the African society. Therefore, to the average African man, a woman is viewed as a being of weaker sex, weaker intelligence, weaker strength and, of course, weaker emotion.

In view of this, the African society, therefore, manufactured a cage of limitations upon the engagements of women in religious, social and political functions and as a confinement to define and label a configuration of expectations in values, attitudes and relevance.

The United Nations Millennium Summit was held in 2000 where 189 nations agreed on eight quantifiable targets to address global poverty and development. Similarly, the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) addresses gender equality and women’s empowerment with a key target to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education not later 2015.

In spite of the above-named interventions, we are yet to see any significant movement towards this direction namely to ensure that women globally are placed on the same pedestal with their male counterparts.

The launch took place in our own country of the Nigerian National Gender Policy in 2007, a framework headed by the Federal Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Social Development, with a view to creating a variety of federal departments and sectors, faith-based organisations and women’s humans rights organisations.

We are in 2020, yet the issue of gender discrimination is still a major factor affecting the Nigerian nationhood, nay virtually all African nations. This is mainly because those major factors mitigating against the realisation of gender equity and equality are still potently and effectively in force in every African society.

However, the African society needs to redefine the cultural, socially-constructed differences between the two sexes and its applications to socialisation. The African woman should not be addressed based on her biological nature, physical differences, religious beliefs and cultural values.

By seeing the African woman as a fellow human with equal, if not higher, residual knowledge and intelligent quotent will enhance gender mainstreaming, a strategy for integrating gender concerns in analysis, formulations and monitoring of policies, programmes and projects. The purpose is to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women in population and developmental activities by addressing both the condition as well as the position of women and men in the society.

 

• Erelu Oodua Onaneye writes from Texas, USA.