Female Education has a great role to play in Women’s empowerment and gender equality. This is because when you educate the girl, you equip her intellectually. You give her the tools necessary for survival in this modern world. This broadens her perspective and helps to empower her financially by creating opportunities for her. It also opens her up to a world of endless possibilities. Education liberates a woman mentally and makes her see herself as a person capable of making a difference in society. I am very passionate about women shattering societal constructs and breaking away from stereotypes. This is why I am greatly concerned about the girl child education.…
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Fathers who expect a Medal for doing the bare minimum for their Kids.
It bothers me that we have turned parenting into mothering, that is, into a one-woman affair. We have made it look like the emotional and personal needs of children should only be met by their mothers. This is so wrong and it encourages men to be absent and unavailable for their children. Sadly, many women who didn’t have present fathers have gotten so used to this one-sided type of parenting that they see it as normal. Hence, you see them being overly grateful/gushing about every little thing their husbands do for their children. What do I mean? In a group I belong to, someone threw a question to the floor…
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The Tinker Girl
Swinging my bag and walking around the area, I couldn’t believe I had made it out. We used to sit out on the sand and admire those we saw on TV wearing green and white and marching. Today, I was one of them. I had finished school and I had been posted to somewhere to serve. We’d just finished the three weeks camp and I had returned home after years of staying away to tell my people that I had made it. After dropping my bags at home and showering, I had gone round to see my old acquaintances, friends, and the younger ones I’d left behind. My first stop…
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Becoming Conscious: The Discourse On Misogyny and Objectification in Music, Comedy Skits, Nollywood and Culture by Benjamin Sarumi
Becoming Conscious: The Discourse On Misogyny and Objectification in Music, Comedy Skits, Nollywood and Culture – Benjamin Sarumi Misogyny is the dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. Need I say that a woman loved, is a generation loved. As much as this is compared with anti-woman sexism or misandry, perhaps, it’s important to state clearly that women can hold misogynistic views. Music, movies, comedy skits, online video gaming, these days cartoons and innocent conversations, build negative muscles for the purpose of new culture formation. Without a doubt, the listed can serve as a catalyst for social change and the right excuse for making destructive teachings cool. It’s…
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International Boy’s Day
Today is the International Day of the boy and this year’s theme is focused on Empowering, guiding, and providing boys role models for a peaceful world. Over the years, it seemed like more people focused on training girls to be perfect while boys were left to meander through life on their own. As a result, so many men had to learn a lot of things the hard way. Many of them grew up broken and didn’t have anyone to turn to or ask questions. For decades, men were even told not to cry because it was unmanly. So, they bottled up their insecurities and fears. As years progressed, we have…
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Birthday Reflections 2020
AND SO THE CLOCK STRIKES A NEW YEAR! Well, the earth has gone around the sun for a whole year since I last marked my birth. Here I am again, a year older. I decided to mark this year in an unusual matter. I want to openly reflect on how the past year has been for me. The past year has been filled to the brim with lots of ups and downs. There were good times and not-so-good times. Compared to previous years, I have been molded than I could ever account for this last year. I am grateful for the progress I have made. I am remorseful for the…
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The Resentment targeted against Gender Advocates: We are also fighting a just cause
I am active on social media. There, I get to table my thoughts, and share my views with like-minded individuals, receive criticism on my advocacy from genuine critics, and get tongue-lashed by narrow-minded humans. Yet, it is what it is. I am used to the cycle, too. Recently, I was on Twitter, and I came across someone who, basing his argument on the global suspension of football no thanks to coronavirus, argued that more feminists will become busy bees about advocacy, trying to win more hearts over to the cause. And from the precedents of his tweeted argument and the succeeding tweets, you could tell he had an ax to grind…
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Why Some Women don’t like the term ‘Wife Material’?
A lot of people, including me, have never been comfortable with the “Wife-Material” tag. The reasons are quite glaring. When an average Nigerian calls you a wife material, they mean that you are a perfect definition of society’s stereotypical woman. They see you as someone who is living a script, not necessarily as someone whose personality they admire, but someone who would fit into the descriptions of someone else’s future demands. Wife material, in the view of many, is a measure of how domesticated a woman is. It seems that is all a woman entails as if women should fit into a box the society has designed for…
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Changing Gender Stereotypes taught in School
From childhood, many people unconsciously start learning stereotypes (a widely-held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing). It starts with the illustrations in our primary school textbooks. A doctor is usually a man and a nurse a woman. A bank manager is typically a man, and the secretary or cleaner is a woman. At such a young age, these pictures and words create lasting impressions that, in some cases, are never shattered. This is why many people assume that any woman in a white ensemble in a hospital is a nurse. It doesn’t matter if she is the one in the consulting…
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Men Picking Up The Gauntlets 3!!!
As a gender advocate, I have had people ask me what about advocating for men. They ask: “Isn’t gender equality all about gender balance? Why am I always throwing the spotlight on women or highlighting women’s issues.” I smile and tell them that I speak about girl child and women issues because I have first-hand experience of a lot of the things I talk about. As a woman, I know what it means to live in a patriarchal society. I know to a large extent, the power those stereotypes can wield over people’s perceptions. That is why I am fighting really hard to change them in our girls’/women’s minds and…
