United Nations Women(UN WOMEN) have frowned at a situation where women carry the burden of families withot being given the opportunity to contribute to the economy.
Speaking at a workshop in Calabar on Thursday, a Programm Associate Temitope Wealth Ekanem in charge of Women Economic Empowerment at the UN Women regretted that inspite of the God-given strength of women, their potentias have neither been tapped by family nor by the society.
Temitope Wealth-Ekanem who spoke on “Unpaid Care Work and Care Economy,: “Concepts and Policy Implication,” noted that Nigeria has not been able to tap from the potentials of women because of enormity of house chores and the traditional believe that women are meant to serve men
She urged government at all levels and other stakeholders in the society to involve women in paid jobs so that they can contribute to the Gross Domestic Product of the country and the various states.
In a similar vein, another , UN Women Programme Associate, Aisha Alkali, who spoke on “Understanding the Care Economy: Why Care matters, Economic Value, Gender Dimensions and Development Linkages,” pointed out that the solution to the menace of unpaid work by women was to put in place policies that allow women have their children taken care of by trained, and paid child Care givers, even in the workplace.
She was of the view that if government could enact a law which allows every mother to be paid for even domestic chores, the economy would improve.
She noted that women spend so much time to do unpaid Job which can be channeled into productive areas, insisting that tradition must be done away with for women to get the needed liberty.
Suggestions were made for every public and private institutions to consider the establishment of child care centers both within federal and state establishment and private establishments as well as infrastructure that will give confidence to mothers in order to enable them give their children to the centers while they concentrate on paid jobs.
