Former President of the Republic of Mauritius, Prof. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim has observed that until women change their mindset, conquer their individual timidity, and learn to take risks, they would never be able to adequately contribute their quota, to national development.

Gurib-Fakim stated this in Lagos, at the 2018 Women Power Launch, entitled “Smart Economics: Empowering Women in A Changing World”.

“For women to fully unleash their potential and contribute to our national economy and eventually the global economy, we need to defeat our own prejudices and even our subconscious antagonism towards one another,” she  said.

Gurib-Fakim called for collaboration to eradicate gender inequalities, to allow women occupy a very significant and decisive place in the social, cultural, economic and political life of the country.

“It is not sufficient to make progress against lingering gender inequalities, we must eradicate it all together. Let us dare to be the generation to make the definite difference.

“Women have a special power to advocate for themselves and for each other; we must be aware of that power, and we must unleash it.

“Ultimately, it will be for us women to open the doors so that others may live and prosper; we need to direct our spirit to help out the younger generation.

“We should teach our children how to benefit through our experiences; mind you, this is easier said than done. Women tend to discourage women more than men; that is a tragedy and also a paradox.

“We should be honest with ourselves, it is the first essential step to rooting out our weakness and freeing ourselves as sisterhood of women,” she said.

Speaking also at the event, former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo called for more women representation in the drive towards meaningful national development, stressing that women are an indispensable force in the quest for national development of any nation.

Obasanjo said the women have the power to be in political positions when they support one another, since they constitute 52 per cent of the nation’s population.

“Women should use their power to get the support of those men at their disposal.

“If everything fails, use pillow talk, pillow argument and persuasion, you may even go on strike.

“Men will not give it willingly; you must extract it from them,” Obasanjo said, stressing that unless women are given that space in the politics of the country, they will continue to be shortchanged.

“Women need to be given their rightful place not just in the other room, but in the boardroom.

“When women get education and are empowered, they should be allowed to contribute to the political and socio-economic sphere of the nation.

“Women are more reliable in politics than men; men believe in duplicity in politics. We have to do more than education and throw out of our way of life those culture and traditional or aspect of our religion that put down women.

“Women constitute an indispensable force in the quest for national development of any nation,” he said, decrying the low representation of women in political positions.

“We have 36 states, we have not gotten a governor who is a woman. The one that got voted in, our men made sure that she was removed.

Look at the figure, here in Nigeria we have 360 members in our Federal House of Representatives, only 15 women are members.

“In Rwanda, 64 per cent of members of their Parliament are women, in South Africa, they have 41 per cent.

“We will not even get there until we make sure that our women can take their rightful place in the political arrangements in the country,” he said.

In her remarks, the Convener of the event, Mrs Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, said women had functioned not only as bearers of life, but also demonstrated tremendous capacity to contribute to the development of every facet of society.

She said that factors such as illiteracy, low level of education, cultural practices and conflict combined with lack of access to credit had restricted women and reduced women’s economic power.

“Multiple studies have established that enhancing women’s participation in development is essential not only for achieving social justice, but also for reducing poverty.

“Experiences in different parts of the world clearly reveal that stronger participation of women in economic activities enhances overall development,” she said.