Body designs curriculum to prepare women for leadership 

• Laments Non-Passage Of Women Bill By NASS
A group, under the auspices of the Women Leadership Institute (WLI), has designed a curriculum to help neutralise African society’s perception about women’s participation in leadership. 

Speaking yesterday in Abuja at the launch of the institute, the Founder, Dr. Kema Chikwe, said there is need for a change of mindset, especially when the space for women are gradually being invaded by millennial women, who are digital, unlike those in the era before them.Chikwe, who also lamented non-passage of Women Bill at the National Assembly, said the passage was a challenge, not only for Nigerian women, but also for the society.

She said women, who constitute more than 50 percent of Nigerian population, were being denied their rightful place in leadership.She recalled that the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, while addressing women in parliament recently, lamented that Nigeria ranks 168th in global index of women development and referred to it as “abysmal global ranking in women representation in governance, especially in parliament. ”

She added that Ekweremadu highlighted that conversely, the East African nation of Rwanda, ironically, and such other Africa nations as South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia and neighbourhood Senegal, were among the top 20.

She said: “Women generally need to have a grasp of the structures of politics and the process that leads to contesting elections. Many young women, who desire to go into politics, are not familiar with the idea that politics has a heavy component of grassroots exposure and is non-class discriminatory, especially if you want to contest elections.

“The WLI offers women the opportunity for political participation and to be that candidate of the party’s choice, institutionalising Maya Angelou’s saying that ‘each time a woman stands up for herself without knowing it, she stands up for all women.”