The President, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Ayuba Wabba, on Tuesday, urged the Federal Government to make empowerment of women and girl-child in the country a priority.
Wabba said this at the 5th NLC Gender Conference and Election of leadership of the NLC National Women Commission on Tuesday in Abuja.
The conference was organised to mark the 2021 International Women’s Day celebration with the theme, “Women in Leadership: Towards Achieving Equal Opportunities for All in a COVID-19 World.”
He said that, “Government should not limit empowerment to only businesses, women need to be empowered and there should be a special programme to actually empower women in the country.
“This is because once the women are empowered economically, then the whole families will also be empowered and children and youth will then be sent to school.
“I think this is a good investment; so, I advocate that the Ministry of Humanities Affairs should have a special programme targeted at women empowerment, because when you empower one woman, you empower a nation,” he said.
Wabba noted that a lot of money had gone in empowerment of women in the country, but this had not yielded the desired results.
He also said that continuous education of the girl-child and women by government should be a major priority as this would lead to more women that would excel in the society.
He also said that women deserve more than 35 per cent quota in leadership position in the country.
He said that in spite of the pandemic, the women commission was consistent since 2003 when the first gender conference was held to support women and build capacity.
The NLC President noted that this result had shown that when women were given opportunities to lead they did it excellently well.
“Leaders are afraid of women taking their position because women are very important and great leaders. Women deserve the rightful place in our society.
“If we have women as governors we will not be talking about removing minimum wage from the concurrent list to the executive list. Thirty per cent wage is poor and most times they don’t get it,” he said.
Wabba, however, said that men, including politicians should give women the chance, space, to participate fully in politics as they are more in number.
“We do not only need women during elections or voting periods. Women and youth constitute 60 per cent of our population,” he said.
The Acting Director, ILO Country Office, Mr David Dorkenoo, noted that COVID-19 had either deepened or escalated the existing inequalities between women and men in almost all areas of life.
Dorkenoo said that this was documented in many studies carried out in the past one year by different institutions.
“To address the inequalities especially in the world of work, the importance of the role of the ILO tripartite partners cannot be over emphasised.
“The ILO tripartite constituents can make a vital contribution to promote gender equality through inclusive policy making as well as gender inclusiveness representation in policy making.
“Tripartite constituents need to see greater role for stronger universal and sustainable social protection policies, investment in supporting families with care work, advocating women as leaders.
“They should also ensure the dignity and safety of women and men in the labour market for better present and future times,” he said.
The Chairperson, NLC National Women Commission, Mrs Mercy Okezie, urged for a deeper reflection especially on the health and safety of women in the face of COVID-19.
“There is the urgent need to further discuss and adopt measures to protect women’s rights, uphold respect and dignity of all workers in this very difficult time,” she said.
Okezie also said that it was necessary to promote and support women’s election into leadership positions and promote gender audit and involvement of women in all activities
According to her, positive steps should be in place, the issue of gender equality should be in people’s consciousness and on the front burner of all labour activities and campaigns.
The Country Director, ActionAid Nigeria, Mrs Ene Obi, said women voices needed to amplify in the creation of laws that would enable the society to live with the COVID-19 pandemic.
She recommended more advocacies for women to have more seats at the table, to increase the number of women in the decision making process.
Obi also said that there was need for a revision of the provision of the Nigeria laws to protect nursing mothers from losing their jobs.