Source: Punch
Ahead of the 2015 general elections, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has developed a curriculum targeted at encouraging women at all levels to equip them to actively in the participation of women in politics and key gender-related positions.

The programme seeks to target leaders of community organizations, University staff and students in promoting gender equality.

Through this programme UNESCO, UNDP and others partners seek to help contribute towards the achievement of gender-related issues and Millennium Development Goals.

The curriculum also aims at encouraging and stimulating young women in schools to aspire to leadership positions in all sectors of the economy.

Speaking with journalists at the venue of the session on Wednesday in Abuja, the Lead Consultant, Dr. Adelaide Sosseh, explained the purpose of the curriculum.

She said, “In West Africa and indeed the African continent, we have had the problem of having women in leadership positions and we also had a leadership crisis. Africa was not coming out of its underdevelopment. If you look at all the underdevelopment indices including mortality rate, children out of school, poverty, environmental degradation and many others all belong to Africa and are high.

“These things are ascribed to the poor leadership that exists in Africa and the fact that half of the African continent population are women but excluded from leadership position.

“We have decided to look at how to bring in women to hear their voices because they are the ones who are responsible for the care in the homes but they are not there at the decision level where the laws are passed, budgets made and where those decisions that impact on their lives are made.”

According to her, the collaboration between these agencies aims to bring out a meaningful curriculum that will encourage a change in people’s minds so that they accept women in leadership positions.

Apart from ensuring that women are not disenfranchised it will ensure that the political parties will identify women candidates who will run and encourage constituencies to vote for them.

Sosseh said, “So, we look at all the factors that are keeping women out of the decision making process. Not only parliament but in executive positions, private sector and in government.

“We have therefore designed a curriculum that we have brought here for validation to see how those factors that are keeping women out will be addressed so that women will get their rightful places in society.”

Also speaking, a former Minister of Women Affairs, Hajo Sani said that the curriculum will be implemented at all levels adding that every geopolitical zone was being represented so that the curriculum can go down to the universities, civil societies, community levels and at the grassroots level.

She said, “After the document has been validated, it will be taken to the grassroots, to all the geopolitical zones in the country to target the rural women and communities, so that they can train the women before the elections so that they can participate in 2015 general elections.”

In order to achieve this, UNESCO has drawn experts from various fields and different parts of the African continent to brainstorm and finalise the curriculum for its distribution and implementation in all nooks and crannies of the country.

The four-days brain storming session is being coordinated by three consultants who are globally renowned specialists on women and gender issues.

They include Sosseh, from The Gambia, Prof. Funmi Soeten of the Department of Economics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile,Ife and Hajo.