The theme of this year’s WISCAR end of year graduation ceremony is “Women Leading Change”. Change is a word that has reverberated around our national consciousness in the last one year. It has resonated with many of our various needs and is now a metaphor for several of our aspirations, both individual and collective. It is not only a call for action to all of us but it expresses:
- Our need for national redemption;
- The rebirth of our moral consciousness;
- The mending of fractured communities;
- A rethink of most of our national goals and many other desires.
The essence of it all is our realization and acceptance that we must evolve new solutions to our challenges in order to begin to repair our wounds as a nations and for us to emerge as a wholesome and progressive nation that is equipped and ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Change is merely a process. It is neutral and is amenable to whatever good or bad ends we employ it. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet said ……. “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Although it may, of course, be employed in the pursuit of ignoble ends. The changes we seek and of which I speak are positive changes. Changes that cleanse our principles and beliefs to give birth to renewal. Changes that enable us to re-examine our longest held prejudices and beliefs in order to evolve a more egalitarian and just society.
Today, I will briefly examine change in the context of the plight of women in our society. To set the tone, let me give you some statistics from the Gender in Nigeria Report prepared and published by the British Council and UK Aid.
- 54 million out of Nigeria’s 80.2 million women live and work in the rural areas where they provide 60 to 70% of the rural labour force.
- Women constitute half the population yet own less than 5% of the land in most areas
- Women in formal employment are paid less than men and, amazingly this income inequality has grown since 1999
- Women are more malnourished, less educated and poorer than men.
- One Nigerian women dies in childbirth every 10 days and a poor woman is more than 6.5 times more likely to die in childbirth than the wealthiest top 25% of women.
- Women are under-represented among those who make decisions. For example, out of 360 House of Representatives members, 14 are women and out of several thousand local councilors only 4% are women.
- In addition: Women account for just 17% of Board members and 15% of C –Suite Executives and 5% of CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies.
- From 2011-2013- only 2.7% of 6,517 startup technology companies that receive Venture capital funding has a female CEO.
Women in corporate leadership in Africa – key finding :
- Women hold 12.7% of Board directorships in 307 listed companies in 12 African Countries.
- 9% of African companies have 0 women membership on their Boards.
- Only 15% of women have bank accounts.
I presented some of these statistics in my opening remarks two years ago but I make no apologies for repeating them now. That is because between then and now very little has changed. That is why change is not only desirable, it has become an existential issue.
But what changes do we desire?
We must continue to advocate for and to put in place those policy changes that will:
- Educate all our women – As nelson Mandela said: education is the most powerful tool you can use to change the world” But guess what? – 38% of women in Nigeria lack formal education
- Give proper health care to all women.
- Provide security to all women
- Provide equal employment opportunities to all our women
- Give equal pay for equal work to all women
- Provide working capital to female artisans, traders and entrepreneurs
- Provide improved childcare facilities in order to facilitate career progression to women with growing families
- Provide enabling conditions for our women to better and more fully participate in politics and in corporate life.
If we are able to make even some of these changes we will, in very short order, come close to doubling our Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
As has often been said, women are the largest economic opportunity that remains untapped. A report by Silverstein and Sayre (In 2009) states that currently women worldwide constitute a bigger economic opportunity than India and China combined. They projected that by in 2014, female income worldwide will be $18 trillion. And this is in an environment in which women still constitute 70% of the world’s poorest 1 Billion people. When you consider that Nigeria currently ranks 118th of 134 assessed countries in the Gender Equality Index, it becomes clear that a huge amount of wealth remains untapped in our women from a human capital point of view.
Today, Nigeria is the country with the largest GDP in Africa in spite of her not being the most industrialized. This is because of our large and growing population, now estimated to be 185 million people. When we factor in that women control the vast majority of consumer spending worldwide, it becomes clear, the potential spending power that will be unleashed by every incremental improvement in the fortunes of Nigerian women. I will leave us with what President Barack Obama said in Sierra Leone recently, “The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women”.
In my several years as a professional I have come to the full realization of the hard work, diligence and creativity of the Nigerian Woman.
Nigerian women are achievers. This has been further brought home to me recently by the great strides WISCAR made when we set up sub-committees of the WISCAR advisory board.
The successful women who have served on these subcommittees have given of themselves unstintingly and I thank them.
The WISCAR world has benefited immensely from their contributions. Let must also specially thank all our mentors without whom we would have no programme. May God reward you abundantly (Stand up for recognition)
Let me also congratulate our graduating year for 2015. You have worked hard and today you can bask in the glory of your achievement. I am sure that at the beginning of it all when you were faced with the curriculum you were expected to cover, you must have thought of the difficulties you will encounter in getting through it all. But you have got through it and you are justified to feel proud of yourselves. I trust that you feel better equipped and enabled to progress your career to the next level and achieve your dreams. Please leverage the WISCAR network and all other women network. Let us support and develop each other.
Let me leave you with a stanza in a poem by Edgar Albert Guest titled:
“IT COULDN’T BE DONE”
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done
There are thousands to prophesy failure
There are thousands to point out to you one by one
The dangers that wait to assail you, but just buckle in with a bit of a grin
Just take off your coat and go to it
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done “and you will do it.
Finally, let me warmly welcome our new WISCAR mentees who are here to be inducted into the rigorous WIN with WISCAR programme. I exhort you to seize the opportunities the WISCAR programme offers with both hands to progress your career and contribute to the development of our great nation. The WISCAR community has continued to grow from strength to strength. Our graduating class of today joins our formidable WISCAR Alumni and Network.
I am so glad to see amongst us today many of our past mentees. They have continued to support us and we have continued to take pride in their growing personal and professional success and consequence.
Enjoy the rest of the programme.
Thank you for listening
Amina Oyagbola
Founder WISCAR
21-11-15
