Accelerating Action For Women’s Development
By Adeola Adeleke (PhD)
Another International Women’s Day (IWD) is here again. This is a global event that is celebrated annually all over the world. The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day in 1975, which had been proclaimed the International Women’s Year. It aimed to provide a forum for women to campaign for equality and women’s rights. Over time, it has evolved to a day to raise awareness about the challenges women and girls continue to face. Every year during the celebration, the United Nations works on a theme. The theme for International Women’s Day 2025 is ‘Accelerate Action’.
The theme Accelerate Action emphasises the need to work faster and more effectively to achieve gender equality. It is a worldwide call to acknowledge strategies, resources, and activities that positively impact women’s advancement, and to support and elevate their implementation. ‘Accelerate Action’ signals that urgent and coordinated measures are necessary to recover lost ground and ensure women are not left behind. Accelerating action for gender equality will involve taking bold steps by all parties involved towards achieving a targeted impact in closing gender gaps in all spheres of society—both the social, political and economic areas. Accelerating Action by any organisation government or society to close gender gaps, eliminating discrimination, and ensuring avenues to promote equal opportunities for all genders.
In Nigeria today, while legal frameworks exist to promote gender equality, societal norms, economic disparities, and weak law enforcement continue to hinder progress. There is a need for accelerated action for strengthening legal frameworks for the rights of women, by ensuring that there are legislations and legal rights towards eliminating gender-based violence and cultural barriers, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and harmful traditional practices like female genital mutilation (FGM) that persist despite legal prohibitions. Patriarchal traditions continue to limit women’s rights, particularly in marriage, divorce, and inheritance. One major challenge of legislation passed is how effectively it is implemented to serve the purpose.
The issue of women’s participation in politics in Nigeria requires accelerated action with only 6.7 % in elective and appointive positions. This number of women representations is a far cry from the global recommendation. Nigeria has signed international agreements like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Yet, implementation remains weak. The 35% affirmative action policy for women in government is often ignored. The Beijing Declaration of 1995, a milestone that promoted women’s rights and gender equality globally in all spheres of development has not been attained. Women interested in politics should be encouraged by offering the necessary resources, in the form of financial and peer support. Political parties should be encouraged to implement gender quotas to ensure more women are involved in leadership positions. Women already in such positions should encourage others to join.
Economically, women contribute significantly to agriculture and trade but struggle with limited access to credit, land ownership, and job opportunities in formal sectors. Accelerating action towards ensuring women’s economic empowerment by providing access to resources, and creating enabling environments for women in Nigeria to thrive. Inclusive trade policies that remove barriers for women in supply chains will accelerate women’s economic entrepreneurship.
This article calls on the government to accelerate action by raising awareness of the challenges of gender stereotypes in society. This can be achieved by encouraging media campaigns that will highlight the achievements of women in society, thereby, helping to dismantle the stereotypes against women. Accelerating action is a call for accelerating women’s economic dependency. This will involve enforcing policies that will help to close gender inequality and gaps in identified areas, by ensuring that women have access to quality education and skills development opportunities.
When health care and well-being of women are accorded accelerated action, by enacting policies that prioritise women and girls’ health issues like maternal health, and reproductive health. Doing this ensures better efforts towards achieving gender equity. Ensuring women and girls have access to affordable healthcare, that is gender-focused enables better productivity. The government can make this possible if they allocate a significant portion of the budget to women’s health programmes. Improving access to healthcare services by building clinics and hospitals in rural and underserved areas will impact health empowerment and care of women.
According to data from the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of progress, it will take until 2158, roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity. While progress has been made, achieving true gender equality in Nigeria requires continuous legal, social, and economic reforms. As we celebrate another International Women’s Year in 2025, this piece calls on the government, and those in power, to step forward in solidarity with the International Women’s Day theme to help ‘Accelerate Action’ for women’s development in all spheres of society. This can be achieved by improving women’s rights, enforcing existing laws, promoting female political participation, investing in education, and challenging cultural norms that sustain discrimination. Empowering women will not only promote equality but also drive national development.
