Source: This Day 
Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Zainab Maina, has expressed the readiness of the Federal Government to work with the United Nations and other development partners to empower Nigerian women economically.

Maina, speaking at a one day consultative forum on economic empowerment for women in Nigeria, added that economic empowerment is central to the achievement of political empowerment and institutional development. She noted that there can be no proper development that is not backed by an economic component.

The minister lamented that most of those considered poor in Nigeria are women and that the nation's human development indicators are worse than those of comparable lower middle-income countries.

"It is estimated that 2% of Nigerian children are malnourished, these statistics hide a context that is worse for women and girls. Nearly six million young women and men enter the labour marker each year but only 10% are able to secure a job in the formal sector and just a third of these are women," she said. In his remarks, the Resident Co-ordinator of the UNDP, Mr. Daouda Toure, said women in many countries including Nigeria are taking on more and more work, paid and unpaid to cushion the impact on families and communities with little or nothing to show for it in terms of economic security or personal well-being.

Toure called for the empowerment of women economically which is part of realizing their rights.

Gender equality, he noted, cannot continue to be an after though in trade policies and negotiations but concrete measures in trade agreements, policies, strategies and programs to address the constraints women face in empowering themselves economically.

"The UN's comparative advantage in Nigeria is in advancing social and economic reform in line with international norms, enabling good governance, addressing human rights and mainstreaming gender.

• Nigeria