By KENNEDY EBERECHI

Foremost Care and Advocacy group, Charity Ambassador Care Foundation, has called on stakeholders to take proactive steps in tackling the persistent barriers against gender quality and recognise the enormous potentials of women as the society is driven by their existence.

It made the call in a media statement endorsed by Mrs. Jane Obozele, Founder and Executive Director of Charity Ambassador Care Foundation, on the occasion of the 2021 International Women’s Day Celebration. The Foundation stated that given their enthusiasm, managerial abilities in building a formidable home and the society at large, women have the potential to contribute immensely to the socio-economic development of a nation.

“There is need therefore to create an enabling environment and opportunities for the socio-economic empowerment of women,” the Foundation said.

It frowned at that fact that despite these inherent attributes, women empowerment is still a burning issue in the polity. This, according to the statement, is in recognition of the vast number of women with little or no education and skills to enable them support their livelihoods or to become active in the mainstream economy of the country.

“The problem is further exacerbated by the alarming high number of our women who are either unemployed or under-employed. Again, those who are successful are being looked at from an immoral point of view. Women are pathfinders and they work assiduously to achieve any feat they set out for,” it explained.

While reckoning the challenges facing the contemporary women, the Foundation informed that women face limited access to credit to capitalise their micro-informal businesses. It said: “In spite of having brilliant business ideas, the women and girls are sometimes regarded as high-risk clientele group as they do not have the prerequisite collateral.

“They often cannot access project funding from the formal financial institutions. This has left the women and girls stuck in the vicious poverty cycle as their businesses remain merely aspirational and micro in nature, providing income for subsistence purposes only.

“Certainly, efforts to design and implement practical programmes to generate decent employment, reduce poverty among women and girls and economically empower them to play a more meaningful role in the development and fulfillment of their communities and the nation at large is timely, as it is the catalyst for family and societal values recovery.”

The Foundation asserted that policies are needed that will promote equality in childcare responsibilities and provide state support to families, and those who work in the informal economy. It cited as cause for hope, growing support in tackling gender-bias barriers; a ‘driving will’ for change across generations and countries, while adding that the last 26 years “have shown us what is needed to accelerate action for equality.”

“We don’t have an equal world at the moment and women and girls are angry and concerned about the future. They are radically impatient for change. It’s an impatience that runs deep, and it has been brewing for years,” the Foundation concluded.

Specifically, the International Women’s Day, celebrated every March 8, is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

This year, the United Nations celebrates the tremendous efforts by women and girls around the world in shaping a more equal future and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights the gaps that remain.

“Women’s full and effective participation and leadership in of all areas of life drives progress for everyone. Yet, women are still underrepresented in public life and decision-making, as revealed in the UN Secretary-General’s recent report,” Charity Ambassador Care Foundation concluded.