Stop Dehumanising Women

The International Women’s Day was celebrated worldwide on 8 March, a day the United Nations set aside to draw attention to the plight of women globally. Here in Nigeria various activities were organised to mark the day. But beyond this yearly ritual, there is need to stop some practices that dehumanise women in our society.

Although women are beginning to measure up to their male counterparts in various fields of human endeavour, the vast majority of them are still finding it difficult to excell because of the belief that this is a man’s world and women should be relegated to the background. This tendency has made women not to be recognized for their achievements and contributions to the society. Rather, our society celebrates the social, political and economic achievements of men.

With the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day  being ‘Inspiring Change and Encouraging Advocacy for Women’s Advancement Everywhere in Every Way’, it is time women were given their pride of place in our society and their outstanding accomplishments acknowledged, while we continue to tap their potential for the advancement of our country.

We should do away with practices that generally debase women and the girl child. In some parts of the country, widows are usually made to suffer untold hardship. Some are accused of being responsible for the death of their husbands, especially if the man died at a young age and was wealthy. The widows are subjected to degrading and dehumanising rituals in order to prove their innocence.

Shaving of hair, forcing a widow to drink the water used to wash her husband’s corpse, forcing her to sleep with native doctor to cleanse her of their dead husband’s spirit, confining her to a house and often only one room in the house, and forcing her to remarry her husband’s relative are some of the entrenched babaric practices that should not be allowed to continue in this 21st century.

The girl child does not also fare better in our society. She is either a victim of rape, married off early or denied education. Most parents in rural communities still believe that the girl child does not have to go to school because it would amount to a waste of time and resources since the girl will be married off.

The Federal Government and relevant agencies must enagage in massive enlightenment campaigns to end this myopic thinking and discrimination against the girl child if our country must make progress, because when a woman is educated, the positive multiplier effect is usually immensely immeasurable.