Sequel to this year’s edition of International Women’s Day (IWD) observed across the world recently, a woman and girl-child rights activist, Prince Leye Adefioye, has said that women’s commitments, hard work as well as their relevance to nation building underscore the need to protect their rights and gender equality.a
He added that protection of the girl-child rights and their wellbeing must also be given a priority attention by government, stakeholders, NGOs and other girl-child care givers.
Adefioye, who is the Founder and President of Restanchor Total Child Parenting Foundation, spoke glowingly on the veracity of gender equality for women inclusiveness, freedom from violence, intimidation and discrimination.
He stressed that despite that Nigerian women work very hard and achieved good results in different fields of endeavours, sacrifice daily in markets and farms to train and improve the lot of the next generation of leaders, they still faced gender inequality and different forms of discrimination and loss of privileged, compared to their male counterparts.
“With the gender inequality that women face, they are grossly underrepresented in the nation’s crucial sectors, particularly politics. The society is still largely dominated by men,” he noted.
Adefioye who also doubles as the Coordinator of the Osun State Chapter of National Council of Child Rights Advocate of Nigeria (NACCRAN), urged organisations to address gender inequality by acknowledging and confronting biased practices within their organisations, while reframing conversations about promotions, wage inequities to encourage, provide fair and equal opportunity for all.
“Stakeholders should be ready to kick against discrimination, draw attention to bias and ensure women inclusion in the scheme of things,” Adefioye said.
Against the backdrop of this year’s theme: “Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality” which stresses the need for technology and innovation to advance gender equality, expand pathways to education and opportunities for women and girls, Adefioye called on government to ensure provision and application of technology to give women the opportunity to overcome gender gap in digital access to be able to enjoy technology’s full potentials in different sectors where they operate.
“At Restanchor Total Child Parenting Foundation, our passion is to take care of women and girl-child who fall under the vulnerable group to make life meaningful to them. We carry out diverse humanitarian programmes to cater for their needs and to fight for their rights with a view to guaranteeing equal rights and privileges to them.
Some remarkable impacts we have made so far, earned us a recognition recently when
two Abuja-based foundations – Rescue Complementary Support Corps and NGM Humanitarian Foundation collaborated and honoured me with a Distinguished Leadership award. This will propel me to do more, specially in the area of protection of women and children rights.
While lamenting prevalence of gender inequality caaes of which women are grossly victims, Adefioye said: “Unfortunately, gender inequality is still prevalent in many parts of the world. Women are mostly affected as they are being denied many human rights and privileges. Their right to education, health care, employment and other privileges are seriously impugned. The political right of women is seriously down. Women are even victims of domestic violence and discrimination just because of their gender.”
“Men always lead the way, while men are stereotyped to be at the back. According to the biblical injunction, a woman was taken out of the side (rib) of a man. This implies that they are to walk side by side, reason together and do things together without discrimination. This shows that women deserve equal rights with men in terms of opportunities and privileges, hence the need for gender equality instead of discrimination being meted out at them.
“Most women are relegated to the background, with many of them ending up in the kitchen and in domestic affairs. In tandem with this year’s International Women’s Day, men should carry women along to demonstrate that they (women), too, can do what they (men) can do. They should employ a gender-sensitive approach that takes into account the different needs, experiences and perspectives of men and women.
“In the spirit of the International Women’s Day, I encourage women, especially the girl child to be proud of their gender, remain focused and count themselves as very relevant to the society to be able to achieve the purposes that the society expects from them and the values that they, too, also expect for themselves.”
Adefioye also stressed the need to guarantee adequate girl-child rights and protection through awareness on laws that address child abuse, especially rape, street hawking and trafficking.
“I appeal to NGOs and other stakeholders working on women and child rights to be the eyes of those that can not see or those that can not hear. Women and children belong to the vulnerable group. We need to rise up and defend them. We need to champion their cause so that they can be free, enjoy gender equality privileges so that Nigeria can be better for us all,” Adefioye said.
