Gobroadsheet On International Women’s Day
Editorial –
Every 8th March, is a day set aside to appreciate, commend and see the possibility of giving equal opportunity to all include baby girl, girl, spinster married and divorced women.
To us at Gobroadsheet, we believe and support any course, fair enough to allow women reach their potentials in life whether in their gender role, careerwise or polity.
According to the UN, the first National Woman’s Day was observed in the United States on 28 February in honour of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions.
In 1910, the Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women’s Day, to honour the movement for women’s rights and to build support for achieving universal suffrage for women, this expanded to also be a chance for women to protest World War I in 1913 and 1914.
In 1917, women in Russia held their “Bread and Peace” protest on the last Sunday in February (8 March). Four days later, the Czar abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.
Since that time, women, a good number of them around the world, have proved and still showing their worth in business, family, kingdoms, environment, politics and what have you – the list is just too numerous to mention.
As such, considering this year’s theme which centres around better opportunity for women – Balance for better to be precise, it behooves on all of us to create and maintain a platform where gender issues and opportunity will be a balance one.
As we commemorate this year’s IWD, Africa leaders – executives, legislatures, judiciaries, must defreeze all laws, policies, traditions, beliefs, thoughts, assumptions etc which tend to limit what a woman can do among them.
Society – family, religious institutions, educational institutions, civil society, pressure groups among others, should rise to the need for women to live a meaningful life and contribute to socio-economy development of Nigeria.
Women themselves should not succumb to the societal harmful practices and myth when they have the opportunity not to. They should know that, if others can break great frontiers, then, there should be no limitations to what they can do and height they can attain.
We commend all organisations and establishments such as United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI), Development Communications (Devcoms) Network, Health4All Media Initiative (HAMI), Africa Media Development Foundation (AMDF) among others, for their role in pressing for improved healthcare services in Nigeria.
To this end, we say no to avoidable deaths around childbirth. Federal and state government should earmark agreed (Abuja declaration 2014) 15 percent of their budgets to health sector so that, more women can have access to qualify health services thereby reducing the current high mortality rate in our dear country – Nigeria.
God Bless Our Women.