Blessing Adesiyan: Empowering Women to Achieve Their Goals
Blessing Adesiyan founded Mother Honestly, also known as MH WorkLife, to empower ambitious women to thrive both as mothers and professionals. She is also the Executive Director of Caring Africa, where she advocates for comprehensive care services, supports care workers and promotes equitable care policies to empower communities and unlock Africa’s full potential.
Recently, Adesiyan hosted the Caring Africa Summit in Ikoyi, Lagos, which brought together key stakeholders from both the public and private sectors to discuss caring for families in homes, workplaces, and communities, emphasising the need for gender equality. Her dedication and commitment to making a difference in the lives of others is truly inspiring. Writes MARY NNAH
Blessing Adesiyan, Founder/CEO of Mother Honestly, which is also known as MH WorkLife and Executive Director of Caring Africa, is a remarkable individual who has dedicated her life to empowering women to achieve their goals.
She is a passionate advocate for women’s rights and has been working tirelessly to create opportunities for women to succeed in their personal and professional lives.
Through her various initiatives and organisations, Adesiyan has supported countless women in realising their full potential and breaking down the barriers that hold them back. Her work has had a profound impact on the lives of many women, and she continues to inspire and empower others to create positive change in their communities.
Through online content, offline activation, and a successful podcast, Mother Honestly provides support, resources, and community for mothers navigating the challenges of parenting, work and life.
Adesiyan recently hosted the Caring Africa Summit at the Alliance Francaise in Ikoyi, Lagos. The event brought together key stakeholders from the public and private sectors to discuss the importance of care for families at home, in the workplace, and in communities.
During the event, with the theme “Elevating Care, Transforming Workplaces, and Strengthening Economies,” Adesiyan highlighted the need for a conversation on care. She emphasised that Nigeria is at a pivotal moment where nothing works because there is no attention to care. The society has more children, ageing parents, elderly persons, people with disabilities, and chronic conditions, but none of them has access to a solid infrastructure in Nigeria. Therefore, it is essential to provide care for them.
Adesiyan stated that sourcing for child care, for instance, could provide children with access to a proper early education, which sets them up for success and economic productivity of the country down the line. The mothers and fathers of these children could also get back to work and participate fully in the economy.
Adesiyan also lamented that women starting small businesses are suffering from time poverty. They do not have enough time because, as women, they provide child care and caregiving for ageing parents, the ill, and the disabled in society. As a result, these women are not able to participate fully in the economic growth of the nation.
Speaking further she wondered: “What we have now is a situation where we have allowed women to become the care engine in society. So what we are saying is that how do we raise the value and awareness around care so that we can redistribute that labour; get more women to work and also seek for the well-being of the society? Can you imagine if we have proper childcare infrastructure for children; proper ageing facilities or ageing support for our elderly parents?”
Recalling her unpleasant experience a few years back, Adesiyan noted, “One of the things that was upsetting to me when I moved back to Nigeria was that I lost three parents in two years – my father, mother-in-law and father-in-law – what was painful was the undignified manner in which it happened.
“We are losing our elderly ones to an untimely death in this country because we have refused to seek a proper care infrastructure and so people who would have lived a much better life towards the end of their lives are deprived of the opportunity because we just have not sat down to think about care”.
Explaining further she said, “When I talk about care, I am talking about health care, disability care, climate care and so on, these things are so important. When you look at the spectrum of care, which we have 10 highlighted here today, you will realise that women are the ones who bear the burdens for almost all of them. Women are the ones on the front line providing care. Even when you see healthcare workers, a lot of them are women and most of them are not even paid because we most always assume that women must work for free, so nobody is paying them well.”
“When we look at health care, disability care and even transportation, believe it or not, women are the ones suffering when we don’t have transportation infrastructure. Now we cannot get food easily and the children need to go to school, the mom is the one worrying about all these things”.
“So, for us, we are now in a pivotal moment in our society where we need to think about what is not working and how we can fix it. What we have said as an organisation, Carting Africa is that care is a vital component of our society. Care is the economic engine and if we want our economy to move, we have to provide care infrastructure.”
Adesiyan who hinted that proper care infrastructure could be achieved through policy, noted, “Not everything is money. We can do it through policy; a good example is care workers. If you want to drive better wages and living conditions for care workers, we can just put it in the policy, stating that everyone who hires nannies, drivers, house helps and so on has to pay them legally and need to pay taxes on them because they also have children that need to go to school.
“If you look at the way the public school system works, if you don’t have tax statements, you can’t put children into school meanwhile a lot of these care workers who are nannies don’t have that infrastructure they are resourced and so they get paid under the table and nothing works for them either.”
She stressed therefore that there was a need to continue raising the awareness, adding, “There are no magic pills, we are not going to solve these problems one day but the most important thing is starting the conversation on the value of care.”
On how the government should come in, she said, “I think the government can help us. The government is the first step for us because we can achieve a lot through policy. Even if we want the private sector to step in, we can achieve it through policy. We can demand better from private companies. Through policy, we can say workplaces, you now have to provide more months for maternity leave because that gives the mother more time to provide child care and you can come back to work a better person and more productive.”
Stressing that the government can help with good policies to boost the care industry, she said, “Policy for care workers is number one, it is key; because a lot of these people are filling the care that society needs and I am probably here today because somebody is watching our children. That is the only way we can do the work we are doing. So, care is what is filling all of our work but we are not valuing that care because more than likely it is a woman who is watching all of our children and that woman is probably working for cheaper than the man”.
“So, for us, we feel like let us just even value the care. Let’s recognise that this is something that these people are doing. How can we then make their life better? When we make their lives better, we will reap the reward as a society. It is better well-being for them, more dignified work and more respect.”
She said that for Caring Africa, care is an economic engine, adding, “And what I love about this is that we have been able to link care to economic outcomes and that is why the government should pay attention. Even if you don’t have money, help us with better policies. Let’s hold individuals, families and companies accountable. Let’s see if we try this it will work.”
She emphasized the importance of having better policies for care workers. According to her, the government can contribute in a significant way by investing through public-private partnerships to build childcare centres. Universal childcare can be achieved, where children from zero to five can go to daycare.
She pointed out that many market women carry their children to the market, which makes it difficult for them to work efficiently since they have to take care of three or four children. If universal child care is implemented, more adults could work. It is the adults who are working and contributing to the economy, so they are an essential part of society. However, when 50 per cent of the population that are women are not participating fully in the economy because of children and because they are also the ones providing care for grandpa, grandma, and uncles who are sick, we won’t be able to reap the economic benefits as a society.
She went on to elaborate that her organisations simply facilitate ensuring that people are aware of the existence of these products and services. Additionally, “We are also exploring ways to ensure that companies or organisations that provide care receive adequate funding from the government and private sector.”
“We are examining how to bring the entire ecosystem together because there is an ecosystem that involves all key players – the market, government institutions, private sectors, even the home and men,” she said.
While pondering the fact that many men feel left out of childcare discussions, the speaker questioned why this is so. “Women are often expected to bear the burden of childcare alone, which is why we need to redistribute care responsibilities. We should encourage men to take their fair share and call on governments and workplaces to provide support,” Adesiyan explained.
“I believe in what I call the 4 R’s: Recognising Care, Reducing Care Burdens, Redistributing Care, and Rewarding Care. We need to recognise that childcare is everyone’s issue, not just women’s. By reducing and redistributing care responsibilities, we can ensure that everyone participates. Finally, we need to properly reward the important work of care workers.”
She lamented that right now we have a care industry in Nigeria that is largely unregulated and informal, noting, “Somebody can kill someone in the far North and come to Lagos and continue to be a nanny, and you will not know. We are exposing the working families and that is what happens when we do not seek proper care infrastructure.”
She expressed concern about the fact that even people with the financial means to pay for quality care often cannot access it. She believes that the care industry is very complex and the ecosystem is a mess, making it difficult for people to access good care. At Caring Africa, her job is to help simplify and break down the complexity of the industry.
For example, the organization focuses on two key areas: Child Care and Care Workers. They believe that Care Workers deserve access to dignified jobs and respect. Many care workers are currently being exploited, working long hours for low wages, and facing domestic and gender-based violence. Unfortunately, as a society, we don’t always value care or those who provide it. This leads to a lack of value for care workers and gender equity in our society.
Caring Africa seeks to change this by starting a conversation about the importance of care and the value of those who provide it. They believe that by valuing care, we can create a more equitable and just society.
In 2018, MH Worklife began by providing support to working mothers. However, its founder realized that the issue of care was bigger than just mothers. During conversations with mothers, she discovered that caring for children and trying to balance work and family was a challenge for everyone, not just women. The founder believed that care should be a public issue and not just a problem for women. Women have already done a lot for society by caring for their children and supporting their families.
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I believe in what I call the 4 R’s: Recognising Care, Reducing Care Burdens, Redistributing Care, and Rewarding Care. We need to recognise that childcare is everyone’s issue, not just women’s. By reducing and redistributing care responsibilities, we can ensure that everyone participates. Finally, we need to properly reward the important work of care workers
