As we celebrate IWD 2021, I chose to challenge gender stereotypes in the workplace by advocating for inclusive work spaces that enable women to achieve the work and family balance so that they thrive. Often women get overlooked in promotions during their child beating ages due to perceived loss to the organisation when maternity leave is taken. This role of national and strategic importance is not recognised but instead viewed as a minus, which can be avoided by having a male person instead. I chose to challenge this notion and urge companies to instead re-model their work spaces to promote safe motherhood, which leads to increased performance when women can still mother their children and work simultaneously. I chose to challenge the mentality that it’s more costly to hire women of child bearing age and instead state that there is stability in hiring these family women who are more grounded and willing to give 100% of themselves in their jobs whilst maintaining a stable environment for their children.
Outside of the workplace, I choose to challenge the mentality of preparing the girl child for total surrendering of themselves in marriage without similar grooming of boys into fitting with this groomed woman. I choose to challenge the mentality that girls and women can be as liberated as they want but when they get home they should immediately conform to the requirements of super women who serve without complaining no matter how tired or unwell they maybe it. It is time that society grooms both girls and boys together to ensure that the evolving gender roles are complementary not conflicting. It’s time that society teaches our boys that they need to be able to take care of themselves without expecting a woman who has spent 8 to 9 hours at work to come home and serve them whilst they lounge around simply because they are men/ male. We need a society of empathetic men whose love for their women is such that they can reciprocate without shame or guilt.
It is time that we mainstream gender equality into the school curriculum to ensure both boys and girls are brought up with information parity, thus preventing conflict. The boy child must be ready to deal with the empowered girl child hence the need to include the boy child in and gender conversation. I choose to challenge the notion that gender conversation always causes conflicts by upsetting the cultural balance as it pushes for girls/ women’s rights only in a biased manner but instead claim that inclusive gender conversation builds healthy communities. I choose to challenge the exclusion of boys and challenge them to celebrate their mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and all the strong women in their lives. Happy IWD 2021 #Ichoosetochallenge
