The Nigerian government has been urged to commit a specific percentage of national budgets and development funds to interventions that address gender disparity.
This it said would bridge the multi-sectoral gender gaps in Nigeria and improve the standard of living for women and girls.
The UN Women Regional Director for East Africa, West, and Central Africa, Maxime Houinato who is in Nigeria for an executive visit, said this at a Press conference in Abuja.
Houinato noted that “persistent gender disparities are adversely impacting Nigeria’s economic growth potential, making it imperative for immediate action to address this issue.
He said; “Despite the high participation rate of women in Nigeria’s informal sector, they continue to face discrimination in the formal job market. I was thrilled to meet Nigerian exchange group that decided to start working today with UN Women to launch in 2025, the first gender bond in Nigeria, with contributions from various investors to gather resources to address the lack of opportunity that women suffer from. “So, I find those initiatives interesting, because so far, only government has been fighting and putting resources into critical elements of gender inequality. But, now we see more and more private sector getting interested. The reason is that gender-based violence and gender inequality were placed before in the social sector in terms of the humanitarian consideration, and now moved into the economic sector, where we recognize that gender inequality is crippling the economy.
“Women are building human capital in the country, from education, to health, to sanitation. The suffering of women is having a detrimental impact on the building of that human capital, which is at the centre of productivity and economic growth. So, we are happy that both government and the private sector have realized the importance of women in wealth creation. So gender inequality is no longer an issue of women, but rather an issue of men and the nation,’‘ UN Women Regional Director for East Africa explained.
According to him, increasing investment in women’s empowerment will improve national GDP and overall development on the continent of Africa.
Houinato said; “The question UN Women poses is not necessarily increasing what women are doing because if you are setting on a non-lucrative segment of the value chain, your increment is good but not good enough. What UN Women do is bridge the barriers that prevent women from migrating into the more productive and more lucrative path, for instance instead of being in the garden producing the whole day and having only five percent, why don’t we help them with the transformation of vegetables, why don’t we help them with commercialisation of vegetables where 90 to 95% of the money is been distributed. What UN women do in the economic empowerment of women is to question the distribution of revenue along the value chain. And not saying, let’s facilitate their work, they are doing things manually, so let’s help them do it electronically, it is good but not good enough. So we are questioning the structure of the economy that will benefit everybody, that’s fundamentally what we need to understand.”
“The value is in how much men are willing to admit women into the packs of the economy. What we call low volume high revenue, instead of high volume, low revenue,” Houinato said.
He also explained that “the UN Women were committed to supporting women in all areas.
“Interns of what we do in agriculture, because we have different levels we have the rural, urban area and political area and we want to support women in all the areas. We also work with government to ensure that there is a minimum procurement towards women. We are working with government to establish a law that will say at least 30% of government contracts have to go to women’s businesses. That’s what we call gender responsiveness procurement. So that when women have resources we know how they invest their money.”
In her remark, the UN Women Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Beatrice Eyong stated that the financial implication of Gender-Based Violence is enormous.
She said that if the prevalence of violence against women and girls is reduced, income and earnings would improve as well as the economy of the society at large.
Eyong said; “UN Women promotes Women Empowerment Principles, WEP, which is looking at how women should be treated in private enterprises, how their work conditions and promotion can be, and how they can consider things like maternity leave. With this WEP, private companies are considering all those points, including sexual harassment. About 160 private enterprises have taken on board the WEB.”
She said; “The Regional Director had meetings with stakeholders where he advocated for increased investment in gender equality and women’s empowerment. This includes advocacy meetings with Nigeria’s Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Abubakar Bagudu, where he also advocated for increased allocation of specific budget lines to address gender disparity in Nigeria. There was a meeting with the Director General of the Public Procurement Agency in Lagos where an AfDB/UN Women-assisted gender-affirmative procurement project is being implemented to promote the participation of women-owned businesses in public and private procurement.”
Mercy Chukwudiebere
