EQUAL RIGHTS! MYTH OR REAL?

Women and girls are not commodities and must be treated as human beings with equal rights to those of men. Those were the words of Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund as he addressed politicians from across the world at a conference in Stockholm.

It is good to know that there are still men out there who would advocate for equal treatment for both men and women alike. Shouldn’t we be accorded equal rights to employment, earnings, and positions in the political, economic and social affairs of our dear country?

Why won’t a girl be made the most senior prefect in school? Must she always be next to a boy? Why would you rather listen and harken to a man when it comes to matters of decision? And relegate a woman to the background on important decisions?

In Nigeria, it is observed that the womanhood is reduced to a mere infidel and a second-class citizen, hence, there is the commonality of general belief system that the best place for women is in the ‘Kitchen’. This trend has brought about tremendous misrepresentation of women right at the level of the family down to the circular society.

Unfortunately the Nigerian society is patriarchal in nature which is a major feature of a traditional society. It is a structure of a set of social relations with material base which enables men to dominate women. Women are therefore discriminated upon from, in most cases, acquiring formal education, mistreated and perpetually kept as house-help; the average Nigerian woman is seen as an available object for prostitution, forced marriage, street hawking, instrument of wide-range trafficking and a misfit in the society. Thus, the purported irrelevance associated with the status of women in society has merely reduced an average woman to an inferior commodity.

Somehow how I do not blame the society for what they have done to us and for what they didn’t do, I blame us “women” who have chosen to stay put where society has put us and has refused to fight for what could be ours. No one will bring honor to your doorstep GIRLS, you have to work for it, you have to earn it, you have to strongly contest to be recognized as a woman here. The man on the other hand has little to do, their physical build alone affords them positions. This is why I give it up to women in this country and beyond who have accorded themselves names

No matter what situation you are now WOMAN, get literate, learn a trade, get a job, do whatever it takes to get to that place of honor and recognition and help others see through your light. They say it is hard being a man, I agree but I say it is harder being a woman.

If you are a woman out there struggling to be someone, do not stop, you just might have reached the silver lining.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it is possible.” - Rich De Vos