CaRE-NGO with support from Urgent Action Africa in her series of engagements with relevant stakeholders has advocated for women economic rights and empowerments in Nigeria.
In one of its recent engagements, Professor Bala Dogo, who represented the executive director, Mrs Joy Dogo, in an overview of the project’s aims and objectives, said the aim of the project was to advocate for the economic rights and empowerment of women by engaging stakeholders to create awareness necessary for the success of the project.
He said, the project was also to interact with household heads (men) to underscore men’s role in the process of empowering the female gender, adding that the role of men in the process of empowering women is huge and cannot be overemphasized.
Corroborating the executive’s position, Esther Jatau, added that stakeholders such as the government ministries and departments saddled with the responsibility of women empowerment, religious bodies and community heads were visited to create awareness and solicit for more room for women’s empowerment.
She disclosed that it was for that reason that men who are household heads were invited through the community leaders alongside women for the interaction so as to help address the friction often experienced when and where it has to do with women’s rights and empowerment with representatives from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) as facilitators and speakers.
Ifeoma Mengiri of the National Human Rights Commission in her presentation explained that aside the general Human rights enshrined in the constitution, women also have Rights such as the right to education, the right to earn a living, the right to feed well, the right to vote and be voted for, right to dignity and so on.
She stressed that a woman must not be maltreated under any guise as she has a cover by the law. She enumerated a lot of cultural practices that are inimical to women’s well-being. One of such practices was the subjection of a woman, when her husband dies to either sleep with the corpse or drink water used in bathing the same corpse for her to be free of any blame. Such cultural practices are evil and have contributed to the ill-mental health of many women and should stop, she pleaded.
On her part, Bar. Eunice Abel of FIDA, who facilitated the second conversations, began with a question for the participants. She asked why men were insecure when it has to do with empowering their women counterparts?
She said the days when only men could provide for the needs of their household were gone, adding that It is common knowledge now that women are striving in different sectors of the economy and that men must make allowances for the empowerment of women.
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