TheCable

Women are seen and touted as an important index in the world’s development. One needs to just check global goals, from Millennium Development Goals to the present Sustainable Development Goals. The world’s global noise continues to gain momentum and there seems to be no end in sight with regards to this. No one will deny the fact that women are smart, creative, intelligent as their male counterparts. But the challenge of all the noise we have been making is in the application and appropriation of the demands of the actions required at the national and state levels.

The stark reality is that women, when empowered, are as hard working and smart as male folk. We have outstanding women who had broken the glass ceiling . But sad enough, 95% of the global women are far from being whom they have capacity to be. One Is quick to ask what is holding them down despite the advancement in knowledge and global efforts towards shinning the light on these underprivileged and underutilised capacity of this human specie?
Yes, we all know it does not take a genius to know women are different in structure and make up. These structure and make ups are part of their uniqueness as our world does not need only a macho structure to move forward. But the question is what is really holding our women down? What is making women capacity to be underutilised despite all the advantages they can bring?

In a research published not too long ago by McKinsey and company in conjunction with Leain. Org, it was stated women are grossly underrepresented in the corporate world than men. It goes further to state ‘one explanation given for this is women need to balance family and work’. But the report went further, claiming that beyond this over rated reason of family and work, there is a more complex reason. That in many instances, women face greater barriers to advancement to senior position than imagined. One can relate with this if we go by the interview granted to another Newspaper by Folasade Olasore, Human Resource director of P&G, in Sub-Sahara Africa where she highlighted support of her company and immediate family to her rise to the top. To her her rise to the top would have been impossible without these support mechanism.

Our reality in the 21st Century about issues facing women are still daunting. World Health Organization not quite long confronted the world with its statistics that life expectancy of women from birth is only as high as 80 years in 35 Countries in the world. While in Africa it is just 54.

Despite this, world population continues to grow larger with an increase in women folk number. A stark reality also is that in Africa where the world population is estimated to blow up in the next 50 years, a high number of school drop outs are still girls.

Human right abuses all the world over is still higher when we compare the percentage of men to women. These abuses vary from emotional, psychological, education and marital amongst others. As close as 2014,virginity test for would be Police Women, Armed Forces were still rampant as prerequisite to join Military in Indonesia, Egypt and India amongst others. To cap the insult upon injury for women, the same test was essential for any woman who wants to marry Military or Police officers. Men are considered to be saint or what is the implication of this? Pay parity is an age long Issue and even in developed Countries like USA, the ugly head of this canker worm Is still pronounced.

Are there values that are entrenching and cementing these abnormalities? We need not look too far. Some believe women are created first to provide sexual pleasure for men. This may not be well pronounced in some culture or religion and its level of adherence may be reducing but this has refused to die a natural death. It has remained an open wound. Unfortunately, everyday the world and especially the media and certain industries are programming women to attract men to their bodies instead of the abilities and skills they do posses.

Many industries also do not showcase or provide internal women mentoring women group which can help sharpen and position the women within the system.Media and advertising messages daily support the archaic value of there is more ‘value in women bodies than in their abilities’. More often than not there is also a promotion of wrong teaching which affirms men are better in ‘maths and analysis’ than women. This had shaped the way few women who have the means thinking this has debarred them from taking investment taking a decision.

So few corporate organizations are founded by women. Though things are changing but the more we can gain speed here the better for our world. If truly the world believe women are vital, our societal value system needs a lot of re engineering in terms of commitment from everyone: corporate, policy making, male folks etc. This will begin with capacity building for both men and women. Men because they need to give wings to women in their lives without feeling insecure and women because the system had for long fed them with wrong precepts.

The above will require commitment in investment and advocacy. Wrong awareness programming of women saying they do not need men need reconfiguration also. Both sexes need the other to keep our world at peace. Awareness is not useful until it leads the world to a place where it restores our freedom to choose what we want instead of allowing the past action or inaction to impose what we must do or how to react to former injustice. While nature and nurture are looking at us human to change our plight, It is time to get busy at reinventing the wheel in creating a world where women are truly valued and given right of way.