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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

JANUARY 2019 “STORIES OF ADVOCACY” ON ADVANCING THE SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH NEEDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN GWAGWALADA, FCT, NIGERIA

Image
    Staff of CWIDI with Female participants in the Focus Group Discussion @Pakio community   Bridget with Adolescent girls @  Momo Sabo communities during the FGD   Staff of CWIDI having FGD with members of Community Watch dog    Bridget with Mr James (persons with disability after the interview   Youth leaders participants @FGD  Paso Gwani community  CWIDI & partners educating women on FP and providing service  CWIDI & partners educating women on FP and providing service  In the month of January CWIDI continued to promote the sexual health and reproductive health and rights of young people in Gwagwalada Abuja through support from Women Deliver. Through WhatsApp and twitter messages CWIDI continued to educate young people on issues relating to SRHR such as family planning, gender equality, gender base violence, menstruation and hygiene, condom use, life skills and negotiation skills. The month under review recorded a major significant achievem
Read more

Gender-based Violence: Examples from the field

“I tried everything I could to fight him off, I tried to scream but only air escaped my lung” Lola, 19years (sexual violence) “I pushed, kicked, punched and scratched and that is when I felt a knife pierce my skin. I want completely limp” (domestic violence) “I thought my legs were fast because they never stopped running but I never thought he was right there with me from the start, waking up with me everyday and that day, I knew home is where I should run from, it is not safe either” (sexual violence) Carie 25 years says “It brings pain in my heart that I couldn’t run away from the isolation very early. It took away my identity and my dignity” (Emotional violence ) Introduction Gender-based violence (GBV) is a violation of the fundamental human rights; in which women and girls are more frequent victims than men and boys. It is a global problem which occurs in the home, at school, in the work place and other social settings. GBV includes rape, assault, wife-
Read more

WOMEN RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS: Gender-based stereotypes.

Another area women are globally discriminated against is gender-based stereotypes. According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR) , gender-based stereotype is defined as a generalised view or preconception about attributes or characteristics, or the roles that are or ought to be possessed by, or performed by women and men. It is said to be harmful when it limits the capacity of women or men to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and make choice about their lives. Even though a gender-stereotype can be positive and psychologically gratifying (for instance, women are merciful and home builders), it is mostly used to pull women down from fulfilling their potentials. Most often in Nigeria, gender stereotyping is negative. It is socially degrading. In mostly all the ethnic groups in the country, women are perceived as weak beings. In fact, among the Yoruba, women are believed to possess ‘seven (7) bones’
Read more