Unimed Center For Gender celebrates International Women’s Day
….VC calls for more celebration of Women’s achievement.
– Steve Ovirih.
The Vice Chancellor, University of Medical Sciences, Unimed, Laje,Ondo, Prof. Adesegun Fatusi has congratulated the Womenfolk in the University on the occasion of the International Women’s Day celebration organized by the Ivory tower’s Center For Gender And Health Equity.
Prof. Fatusi, who was represented at the event which held on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 by the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academics , Prof. Roseangela Nwuba, noted that the society should always celebrate the achievement of women as this will spur them on to want to achieve more for the betterment of the society.
Prof. Nwuba said the term Gender equality has been misapprehended to imply women wanting to compete with men for socio political relevance, stressing that equality doesn’t mean women want to be eqaul to men. ” Equality rather implies ease of access to resources without bias to gender.
” Women wants to be eqaul in terms of opportunities to excell and contribute to the expansion of growth and how to further deepen development in the society.
” Women don’t want to be back benchers or onlookers when they are imbued with natural and intellectual potentials to drive the society towards the part of advancement in all spheres of human endeavors, ” Prof. Roseangela Nwuba clarified.
She called on Nigerians to celebrate women’s achievements and encourage their creativity so that women can be projected to improve their quality input in sports, engineering, politics, medicine, business and many more.
In her welcome address, Prof.Nireti Duyilemi, The Director , Center For Gender and Health Equity corroborated Prof.Nwuba’s opinion as she reiterated that Gender equality simply recognizes different attributes of individuals. She noted that in the days of yore, the belief held then was that women are lesser than men, noting that while some still hold on to such primitive thinking, the world has moved on and equal opportunity to excel are now being created for both gender and this has gone a long way in canceling the gender bias once held as a superior opinion, which kept the girl child or the female folks as the case maybe in the background. Prof. Duyilemi added that gender refers to socially constructed attributes of men and women and the concept has to do with roles assigned without bias.
The Guest Speaker, Prof Babajide Afolabi, Director, Computer Center, Obafemi Awolowo University OAU, Ile Ife in his keynote address said ” freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all manners of oppression imposed by societal prejudices. He noted that equality that is gender based alludes to accelerating gender parity, saluting the global campaign that has been sustained to engage gender equity, which he noted as a step in the right direction.
Prof Afolabi stressed that there should be an eqaul template for both men and women to compete favorably, while noting that anything outside this amounts to gender insensitivity in way that could skew advantages in favour of one gender beyond other as this creates avoidable complex and a sense of low esteem even as he added that when both gender are given eqaul opportunities, we find it more convenient for females to excell as they are opened to doing well when their intuition is challenged to bring out the best in them.
The Computer guru stated that innovation and technology are now more geared towards gender eqaulity, noting that this stimulates our women to see themselves as development partners and not as a set of bench warmers who see themselves as cheer givers when men are doing exploits.
Sighting a practical example, Prof Babajide Afolabi pointed out that the best programmer in his unit at Ife is a woman and a devout Muslim, stressing that if he were gender bias , he would not have known that such woman possesses such fantastic potentials .
Prof Afolabi throwing a wise Crack noted that women as wives know what is better for their husband and have the characteristics of making a dutiful and committed husband reach his potentials without much ado. ” Barrack Obama’s wife , Mitchell once dated a barber and Barrack once visited the barber for a hair cut; on getting home he made effort to taunt his wife by saying if he had not married her ,she would have ended up a barber’wife. A calm and collected Obama’s wife had replied: if had married him , he would be US President.
” What this simply means is that women are emancipated and when we cooperate with them they seem to have the aural that makes for direction towards achieving greater goals even by our men,” Prof Afolabi affirmed.
He noted that innovation and Technology are now more geared towards gender eqaulity and this will get better with time.
Other speakers who contributed to knowledge at the event were Prof.Evelyn Uwa Edomsanwo, who spoke on ” Gender Equity and its implications for National Development, Prof Wahab Oyedele ” Importance of hearing in Speech Development, Dr Felix Afolabi, Mrs Duwoni Increase Eshorfoenie, Dr.Ognniyi and others
The Women’s Day celebration at Unimed also featured health outreach as their medical facilities provided Blood pressure check, sugar level tests among others.
