International Women’s Day 2022 — The African Story on “SDG 5”

It has been three years since my last post on the subject of International Women’s Day, which takes place on 8 March annually. In my last post in 2020, I did mention being privileged “to share a timeline of my research on women (entrepreneurship) over the past decade.”

I also set the context for that post as follows:

“As far as women are concerned, we all do have them! Be it mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, nieces, female colleagues, acquaintances and/ or networks.”

This is a redacted version of that original post. The focus here is mainly on the African Woman. However, just to kick things off, the kitchen is no longer her space or place. Here’s a shortlist of the research…

In my interrogation of gender stereotypes in the workplace, I highlighted a shift in narrative of the kitchen as a workspace. This 2013 article Sex in the kitchen: changing gender roles in a female-dominated occupation , speaks to the conversation on misplaced gender stereotypes at work and the changing dynamics in this space. It also highlights subtle elements of occupational segregation, safety in the workplace, and rather interestingly, identity and empathy in chef life. These issues, in addition to several others, have prompted both scholarly and policy intervention across unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral levels.

A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Delivered by Women, Led by Men: A Gender and Equity Analysis of the Global Health and Social Workforce Human Resources for Health Observer made reference to this article to the delight of the publishers as reported in WHO recognises research in Inderscience journal.

Going back to my inaugural article Breaking the glass ceiling in Nigeria: A review of women’s entrepreneurship , which published in 2009 and currently cited 45 times on GoogleScholar, I explored the relevance of the age-long conundrum known as the glass ceiling as ever more questionable for a number of compelling reasons. By providing a catalogue of pull factors in women entrepreneurship in the African context (especially Nigerian), I surmised that:

The glass ceiling problem may have well been shattered in numerous spheres, and thus become less tenable as a gender-specific reality in the twenty-first century.

In my next article (third in the series presented here), Micro-credit for microenterprises?, which published in 2010 examined those factors that constrain women petty traders’ access to microcredit, and the innovative measures they have initiated in order to counter these constraints. The focus of the article was on petty traders in the market town of Awka in Eastern Nigeria — interesting focus on Igbo women.

The fourth article Setting an agenda for women entrepreneurship in Nigeria , which published in 2011, highlights how the discourse on women, especially in a developing world context, seems to have moved from the margins of international obscurity to the mainstream. Adopting a narrative analysis of a single book on women written by “a woman of status” — i.e., Dr (Mrs) Faseke, a graduate of the University of Ibadan and former Head of the Department of History at the Lagos State University (Nigeria), the study highlights:

The “silent voices” of African women [in an unsung] publication that was encountered purely by chance — Modupe Faseke’s The Nigerian Woman published by Agape Publications (Ibadan, Nigeria) in 2001.

Growing numbers of women graduates and businesses are observed, which suggests that the historical silence among this group is gradually being broken and that changes in government policies and the socio-cultural environment are the key drivers behind this evolution.

The fifth article is actually a book chapter entitled Women entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa , published in 2015, which highlights the challenges of women business owners in Sub-Saharan African using in- depth interviews from four different countries — Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. The primary aim of the study was to pinpoint shared challenges of these women entrepreneurs and/ or business owners drawing upon their narratives and attributions.

The sixth article, which comes with its own uniqueness as a full case study entitled Heaven Kigali-Knocking on Heaven’s Door , was published in a leading textbook, Strategic Marketing: Creating Competitive Advantage published in 2015. Contextual excerpt on Rwanda:

Given Rwanda’s tourism plan in its Vision 2020 commitment to improving hospitality and supporting tourism, the story of Heaven, provides an ideal contribution to the realities of doing business abroad and the attendant liability-of-foreignness [associated with it].

The case study narrates the story of Heaven Restaurant & Bar in Kigali, the capital city of one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, Rwanda. The case was triggered by a CNN documentary focusing on developments in Rwanda — dubbed Africa’s Singapore. Overall, the case highlights how a resilient woman, despite the observed portmanteau of challenges, overcame the liability of foreignness and gender disadvantage — think SDG 5.

Ultimately women are making major strides globally, are “not easily broken,” and worth acknowledging and celebrating. If not for the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis, irrespective of the cultural contexts, be it Ghana, Nigeria or Rwanda, one thing remains a given, we all do have them!

Happy International Women’s Day!

Originally published at https://www.tekedia.com on March 7, 2020.