Adeyemi: FG Should Summon Political Will to Implement WEE

The Chairman, Board of Trustees  of Women in Management, Business and Public Service, Bisi Adeyemi,  speaks on why the federal government must summon the political will to urgently implement  the National Women’s Economic Empowerment policy and action plan to unlock opportunities for women. She also talked about why corporate organisations must go beyond gender inclusion as a policy statement and report measures taken to improve gender equality. Nume Ekegheand Oluchi Chibuzor present excepts 

Lately we have seen a drop in the number of women at leadership roles especially at the National Assembly and at various state houses of assembly. Has this in any way affected the voices speaking for gender inclusion in the country?

That is where to even start and we recognised the fact that policy can only be changed at that level; at the level of either executive and most importantly the legislature. But how many females do you have there? Negligible, and so I think the advocacy will start there even trying to get more women there. Political parties should open and be more deliberate, because if we are half of the population, then surely that has to be represented in all spheres of leadership. What we have realised over the years or in the past 25 years, is that one organisation cannot shift the needle and so what a lot of gender focus CSOs, NGOs and other membership organisation have done is that they have come together to collaborate and be a collective voice for change. Because there is power in numbers, and so when you are talking about the implementation of National Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), the political will is not there. We all know that we live in a society that is influenced heavily by culture, tradition, religion and so many other factors. So, the political will in itself is not there; what we have come to do collectively here just like I have told you about constitutional review, is that a lot of women groups including Women in Management, Business and Public Service (Wimbiz) have come together to assess every aspect of gender within the constitution as it is today, what are the areas that are not working for women? Again there is certain barriers within the constitution which first have to be addressed before they can cascade into policy and implementation. 

We are part of that process, but we will not do it alone anymore because we have tried it for so many years it has not worked for women. That is where collaboration and partnership is coming in  and the memorandum of course will be sent to the National Assembly. Prior to that, Wimbiz has engaged the NASS- seen the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senate President, Women Leader, Minister for Women Affairs, women leader in parliament,- and we are all sought of on the same page, they are outnumbered. So even when it comes to passing any kind of bill the voices that are speaking for gender are not enough and that was why five gender bills were thrown out. But luckily for us, the current deputy speaker who was in the house then when it was rejected; of course the women’s groups have engaged him  and they have called for the gender bills to be represented . So, there are collective actions taking place and these are some of the things that Wimbiz are part of.

What is the expectation  of women groups like Wimbiz from the National Women Economic Empowerment Plan?

If that policy is implemented; right now let me give you the current statistics as it pertains to poverty. The national poverty index of Nigeria has already stated that we have 133 million people in abject poverty and of course women constitute a higher percentage of those that are in multidimensional poverty. Now with the Women Economic Empowerment bill being the top burner  of governance, obviously, it is not even really about organisation, we are looking at the individual areas like the informal sectors and the rest even women living with disabilities.

Once that policy is in place and all the implementation and of course it cannot be one day.  Implementation is a  collective action, it  requires input from  the public sector, CSOs, NGOs , private sectors and so it is going to be a collaborative effort. Once you can increase the Financial and the economic capacity of women this nation is going to transform because we know what we do in a nation.

Can we say the organised private sector are faring well when it comes to gender inclusion?

They can do better is what we will say and I think that accountability is the phase we are in now and they have to start reporting what they are doing. There is a requirement now for them to report under the ESG requirement- they have to indicate to the public and to their  investor what they are doing as far as women empowerment , equal employment opportunities are  concerned and on the things they are doing. So hopefully we will begin to see some changes and we want the public to know what you are doing and not just in your organisation but you have to expose it to the world and to your would-be- investors. Right now there is more that can be done  Over the years, successive governments have been promising to increase women participation in governance. Has this been the case when you look at the current administration’s appointment into various leadership roles even at state levels? Look at the female representatives. The figures are even lower than where we were before, so definitely there is a gap. And so how do we  close the gaps is to implement a quota system; people have always said the quota system doesn’t work but we have seen it work in some countries of the world. So, the banking sector has gotten to where it is now because there was a quota. Former CBN governor introduced the sustainable banking principles and enforced that during his tenure such that banks had to appoint 40 percent female management staff and 30 percent board. So that helped to improve the female representation in banks and that is why you have  quite a few bank CEOs right now. That is what the quota system is and of course the educational system is a bit skewed.  If you look the Northern Nigeria, for example, you can see the percentage that is in school is rather low; and so there have to be some definite and deliberate effort on the part of governors in the Northern Nigeria now to ensure that same opportunities given to male children is given to the girl child, which is currently not the case. So if you think of balance at that level you will get some parity as you now go into the workforce.

You know, since COVID-19, the world has changed the working system and currently and in future working system will incorporate both virtual and physical and in whatever other forms . That stuff totally just changed how human resource and human capital management is done. It started out as a challenge but it has now become a deliberate policy that a lot of human resource departments are looking at the future of work differently.    So, one strategy alot of corporate organisations and government can do is actually looking at the future of work and asking themselves that if you look at the nation and Nigeria has its huge aspirations to play in energy transition  to LED, to drive technology and innovation, to look at education system and the whole digital economy   conversation.

These are our focused areas, we now need to dive deep down and okay in these areas what are the gender gaps , who is playing there, who is educated there. At the educational institutional level how many women and how many men are in science, art, creative and driving innovation and technology because that is the future of Nigeria. If they look at it from that perspective and they now say that is the gender gaps there and they can even go further deep to say how do you now put in place policies and be a bit more deliberate about opening the doors for women in those areas of focus and then start to bring that next generation up and to encourage more access to education and educational amenities for female because that is the future of work should be.

If they look at it from that perspective similar to the way we look at it from COVID-19 and start to put in place those policies that drive from the educational systems and institutions and who is playing in these roles; we will now start to position women. Is like a deliberate effort around  them but again how deliberate it is and when they come out of university how deliberate are corporate organisations; those policies at  corporate organisation level is where you will now start to see 40 percent like the finance industry started doing; where you will say 30 to 45 percent of our entire intake are women. It is very hard to do but is something that if you start to work from the educational standpoint view , you will start to build the pipeline and the funnel; you will start to bridge that gap educationally opening the doors to less privileged people , to more women and at the same time opening the doors to them in specific subject and areas. Then, when you get to the corporate level at work at higher spaces you now have policies again in places, I think this we work to get more women.

To drive policies it takes leadership, it was the last administration that said they want to do 35 percent women representation. That didn’t happen and if that had happened we would have mòre women in leadership as Ministers, Permanent Secretaries at the place of leadership so that they can now take the turn of shaping policies. You can only shape policies if you are in leadership and that is one of the strategic ways we can get more women into key leadership positions.

What specific actions can organisations take to ensure there are equal opportunities for people they are employing now by allowing the selection process to be open for all?

First of all, I know a lot of organisations have policies around equality and are to ensure that those policies are actually implemented. By the time you take company in Nigeria and go through their policy statements you will find out that there is equal opportunities. But in actual fact they do not practice it, so the first thing is to ensure the playing field is equal.  But for women you have to have deliberate policies that actually encourage them to get integrated into the workplace. A woman will go and have children by the time she comes back, probably you are not giving her the same opportunities given to a man. She has lost some time, so give her some opportunities to catch up on the lost time; have opportunities for her to work from home and I think that is a no brainer now and is easier for people to work from home wherever they find themselves. 

So, ensuring that as much as possible level the playing field, because it is imbalanced because of natural factors. We know typically women are caregivers so if a woman has a sick child or parents she is a caregiver and if the employer does not take into cognizant of the fact that woman is a caregiver she will expect her to play the same way as her male counterparts.  So I think it is to be more deliberate taking into cognizant there may be biological imbalance here already, so how do we ensure that the field is level by giving things that we should not give to the woman.  Not playing tokenism, but actually recognising those natural factors that sort of place women at a disadvantage.  We know a lot of these corporate organisation have these policies around gender inclusion but let them implement and implement that perhaps they are not doing very well. Like I said , if you read their policy statements they will tell you that we are an equal opportunity employer . Are they really? Are they deliberate about maybe, say we have this category of workforce and can they say this is 40 percent women , 60 percent male.

Do they do that sensitization from time to time just to  check where they are at. So when it comes to Implementation , you have to be accountable to a standard and somebody has to be checking that standards. . Now I find some boards are now reporting certain disclosures around ESG. A Lot of corporations and even  middle level corporations, their investors , shareholders and even the NGX is holding you accountable to those social performance parameters that speak to diversity; equity and inclusion.   And so you will not just say it in my policy, you have to report and declare exactly how many people, how are they trained, what is the sensitization, corporate culture,  where does it speak to diversity and inclusion. Those numbers will now become matters of public records because you do have to report to a board and if your board is listed the NGX is requesting it  and if you are seeking investment your investors are asking for it. That is the accountability that rounds up this implementation.  

Where do you see the future of women leadership heading both within Nigeria and globally and what do we expect from Wimbiz in the pursuit of advancement in women leadership across Nigerian strata?

I think the future of women leadership is bright. I am very optimistic and at Wimbiz we are very optimistic. Recently we put out and add and we basically congratulated the finance industry in Nigeria where we are able to see women at the helm of top banks. It is really interesting that the top three banks in profitability have females that lead either the holding company or the bank itself moving forward in Nigeria. If you dig a bit deeper within the Nigeria financial services business you now find across various banks, microfinance and insurance so many women. So, what that does is that it shares a very bright light on the fact that there is a huge opportunity for women, that women are capable and do have the capacity to lead in an industry that before now is seen as extremely male dominated. Energy is another space where women are doing very big things in Nigeria. Where you have some leading either in advocacy groups like IPGOPTS, Society for Petroleum Engineers (SPE) or you have women leading organizations like SNEPCO where you have women leading as managing director, on women on the boards as executives or as directors. Like I said , the future is bright and these are again typically male dominated organisations and I have not gone to the Focus businesses. All speaking to entrepreneurship as well and so the future is bright; one area where we can definitely do better is in government. That is something where there is a huge opportunity for female leadership because that is where policy begins. That is where truly when it comes down to corporate Nigeria and public services you then start to drive the narrative differently. 

So female leadership has a way to go and we have taken some good steps, some industries are definitely shining the light and doing better.  Others can take a leaf from what the financial industry is doing and what the energy services are doing as well to do more. The government most definitely needs to start to look differently at implementation of some of these commitments around 35 percent representation and the advocacy that has been coming even hotter for the past three to five years around representation at the various levels of government.

At Wimbiz we have Winpoll which is our own advocacy as far as policy is concerned where we try to encourage those who can present themselves for public office and where they are not able to sort of encourage them to go and vote for those who have brought themselves out. We are responsible for the advocating of gender bills , we put a lot of our own firepark behind it and so we will continue to do that as we go into the future and encourage and associate with women even outside the Wimbiz family to run for public office. Like I said, that is one way of changing narrative faster than anything else. Wimbiz is also very good in partnerships and collaboration and even with the public sector we have collaborated with several of them. But over the past few years the national women economic empowerment policy, Wimbiz, was a part of the process of developing that policy. The real challenge we now have with the Federal Government is that the policy has been completed over a two year period but implementation is now outstanding .  So with the implementation of women economic empowerment policy we will be able to see some of the gaps so has been mentioned here.

What can society  do to combat stereotypes about women in leadership?

We expect the media to do a lot because it is the same media that came up with the negative narratives to a large extent. Just the media can spread the negative, they can also spread the positives. While not sitting with some of these women, ask them their stories and help them publicise these stories. So, let’s learn to shape the narrative ourselves and then publicise . The media has a greater role to play in this by coming to them to share their stories and do they want to encourage other women they will be happy to talk to?. I think it is for the media to shape the narrative and begin to highlight their success stories by doing investigative journalism by finding out what they have done through research.