CURTAILING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA


One of the highly misconstrued issues about women development is women empowerment. Many things referred to as women empowerment are not; they are just hand-outs or ‘peanut’ that only guarantee momentary relief but never lead to women emancipation from poverty.  This misconception, therefore, is one of the reasons for the deep-seated poverty among Nigerian women.
To be sure, women empowerment is a process of awareness and capacity building leading to greater participation, to greater decision-making power and control, and to transformative action (Rahman, 2013:11). It is said to be a process of positive change that improves women’s fallback position and bargaining power within a patriarchal structure, and identify different causal pathways of change; material, cognitive, perceptual and relational.
This implies that any women empowerment programme, project and/or policy that do not guarantee greater women participation in decision-making that positively changes the course of their lives are not women empowerment. If it does not give them the ability to take charge and transform the way they go about their productive activities, it does not amount to life-changing empowerment. Noteworthy in this is that it must guarantee freedom from negative influence of patriarchal nature of our society that relegates women to the background. The connecting ‘rod’ in the equation is education. If any country, especially an underdeveloped country such as Nigeria, wants to attain sustainable development; this is a must.
There seems to be a nexus between highly empowered women and national development. An examination of twelve (12) countries with the most highly educated female workers further lays credence to this. In order of their female workforce, according the World Atlas (2018), Canada has 58%, Cyprus 50%, Estonia 50%, Ireland 49%, Belgium 48%, Luxembourg 48%, Lithuania 47%, Finland 47%, Norway 47%, Sweden 44%, United Kingdom 43% and Spain 42% (cited in https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/12-countries-with-the-most-highly-educated-female-workers.html). The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of Canada and Cyprus (the first two countries) for 2017 were $46,376 and $25,456 respectively (cited in https://countryeconomy.com/gdp). The GDP per capital annual growth in the same year for the two countries was 9.3% and 7.7% respectively. Compared to Nigeria in the same year, the GDP per capita was $1,991 and GDP per capita annual growth was -8.7% (cited in https://countryeconomy.com/gdp). According to Agene (2017), gender gaps in the labour market account for a reported 32% loss in GDP in Nigeria. This is a country where the percentage of females completing tertiary institutions decreased from 41.3 percent in 2010 to 38.4 percent in 2015 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2016).
Therefore, no empowerment of women in Nigeria can make a life-changing impact if it does not include the education of women. Even though formal education is strategic, it does not mean all informal education, including but not limited to empowerment programmes, cannot be included. Thus, the Concern Women International Development Initiative (CWIDI) believes that only income generating programmes embedded in women education can help empower women and avail them the opportunities to be skilful and reduced poverty among them.   



Notes
Agene, M. (2017) is titled “Women's empowerment: a gateway to peaceful coexistence.” It was a report of the Women for Women International on some issues on women empowerment. It can be assessed at https://reliefweb.int/report/nigeria/womens-empowerment-gateway-peaceful-coexistence. Rahman, Md. A. (2013) is titled “Women’s empowerment: concept and beyond”. It is an article in the Global Journal of Human Social Science, volume 13, Issue 6, Version 1; pp. 9-13. The World Atlas (2018) is titled “World facts: 12 countries with the most highly educated female workers”. It is accessible at https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/12-countries-with-the-most-highly-educated-female-workers.html. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and GDP per capita annual growth of countries of the world is accessible at https://countryeconomy.com/gdp. National Bureau of Statistics (2016) is titled “2015 Statistical report on women and men in Nigeria”. It is published by the National Bureau of Statistics, Abuja in November, 2016.

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