Arene to tackle paucity of female representation in leadership with AWCBN
Although a few women have managed to climb to the top in their sphere of operation, many women in Africa and Nigeria find it tough getting into leadership positions due to countless obstacles. This is because Africa still has a gender gap problem, and only few are doing something about it.
While advocacy for policies that support the growth of women and hankering for the implementation of the affirmation is good, it is better to focus on capacity building for women to enhance the skills of women and increase their performance.
Hence, the launch of the African Women Capacity Building Network (AWCBN) by Violet Arene, a management consultant and trainer of business executives.
Launched last Friday in Lagos, AWCBN is dedicated to women and committed to preparing them for future roles in executive capacity and leadership positions; transforming women into experts in their diverse fields; making them better equipped to work and serve sideby-side with men, and ultimately impact economic prosperity.
“… the less the gender gap, the more prosperous a nation becomes and the less the gender gap, the more vibrant, active, and synergistic any business organisation,” she said in her address at the launch.
While exposing the interest of the network through her speech, Arene, who is also the president and founder of AWCBN said gender-gap closure was facilitated by intensified and accelerated capacity building for women, and according to her, it cannot happen by merely wishing it, but by doing something about it.
“AWCBN is delving into the dimensions of capacity building that will invest massively into and intensively in training to enhance expertise, know-how, knowledge, personal development of women to equip women for competitive performance especially in executive leadership,” she said.
Further speaking on helping women getting involved in leadership roles, she said the network believes in affirmative action and quota for women, but also in meritocracy, adding that women have to build their capacity for enhanced performance and not rely on affirmative action.
“There is no discrimination against excellence,” she told Businessday, “when we have built their capacity, their performance will show. I don’t believe in asking for things for women just because they are women. We do want affirmative action because we are so far behind and we want a bit of that. But we must not rely on affirmative action, we must add meritocracy and that is where capacity building comes in.
The event largely focused on solutions to elevating women in positions of influence, so, speakers presented diverse views about how this could be achieved. Among such speakers was Uche Azikiwe, wife of late Nnamdi Azikiwe
Making a case for entrepreneurship for women, the former professor of education at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) called on the government to look into entrepreneurship and capacity building for women.
“We’re saying that a lot of women are not empowered, and one way of empowering women is through capacity building and one aspect of capacity building is entrepreneurship. Capacity building will equip the women with skills, knowledge and the potential for them to excel in whatever they want to do. And when a woman is empowered financially, it is a plus to the government, the family, the community, and the nation at large. It will affect the economy of the nation,” Azikiwe said.
In his special address on capacity building for women in STEM— Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, the immediate past Vice- Chancellor of UNN said special scholarships or opportunities to encourage women into STEM.
For him, this is because of the social stereotypes, access to education, high cost of STEM programmes, and gender-based problems have contributed to the low participation of women in STEM.
“women should be encouraged to enter this filed because they are severely underrepresented already that is why there should be special programmes for them, activities and also special scholarships because the STEM programmes are more expensive and when the women are even underrepresented, the only way to encourage them is by deconstructing the obstacles which is higher school fees and also more scholarships,” Ozumba explains.