March 8 is International Women’s Day. I will be hosting a webinar on the theme: Choose to challenge gender bias and inequality. This is an opportunity to challenge stereotypes, call for inclusion, amplify women’s voices, and to celebrate women. We shall be celebrating all women living beyond limitations, holding up, making an impact, influencing the world, leading positively, motivating the world, transforming lives, standing tall, aiming high, breaking stereotypes, shattering glass ceilings, breaking through concrete walls, striding on sticky floors and escaping career labyrinths. Host: Roseline Adebimpe Adewuyi Speakers: Adebanke Ilori Oyeniyi and Gbenga Oni Coincidentally, both are Mandela Washington Fellows which was not planned by me. Moderator : Ibere…
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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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STOP THE CRUCIFIXION; SOME SKILLS ARE NOT INNATE
Society puts so many ridiculous expectations on women and sometimes experiencing it or thinking about it drives me crazy. One of the those I really hate is how you, as a woman, is expected to know how to handle a baby perfectly even when you have never had one around you all your life. Nobody takes into account your circumstances. All they see is a failure. A woman who is not worthy to be ‘wifed’. My life experience paints a better picture of this situation: I have a twin brother and we have no younger one so I have never known what it’s like to be actively involved in looking…
