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Women Empowermentand Community Development
[A CASE STUDY OF BWARI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, F.C.T, NIGERIA]
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CEDPA (1997:8) argued that there exist countries barriers that hinder
women‟s efforts to improve the qualities of their lives. Compared to
men, women have less access to crucial resources such as information,
education, skill training, health (especially reproductive health and
family planning), cash income and credit, all of which are necessary for
survival within the current economic depression.
According to the
United Nations Millennium Campaign to reduce world poverty by the year
2015, women work two-third of the worlds working hours. The overwhelming
majority of the labor that sustain life-growing food, cooking , raising
children, caring for the elderly, maintaining a house, hauling water is
done by women, and universally this work is accorded low status and
with little or no pay. The ceaseless cycle of labor rarely shows up in
economic analysis of a society‟s product and value.
Women earn only
10 percent of the world income. Where women work, they are limited to a
set of jobs deemed suitable for women invariable low pay, low status
position.
Furthermore, there are certain laws or customs that
prevent women from getting loans or credit, or having the right to
inheritance or to own their homes, they have no assets to leverage for
economic stability and cannot invest in their own or their children‟s
future.
Presently, women have more opportunities for education and
stronger legal rights in many countries; they are taking leadership
roles in local communities and stand at the fore front of peace
movement. Perhaps the greatest change will come when women and men agree
to work together for gender equality. Women‟s rights are well
established by international agreements, notably the international
agreements on eradication of discrimination against women (CEDAW), which
explicitly include women within the definition of human and hence in
all international human right conventions.
In our society, community
development practice is not new. Before the colonial era various
communities employed communal efforts as mechanism for mobilizing
community resources to effect physical improvement and functional
facilities in their various localities. In the social, political and
economic aspect of their lives. Through communal labor farmland were
cultivated, homes steeds constructed and other needed amenities
provided.
In the colonial era a new concept of community development
was introduced in the area of mass mobilization for self help
activities. Community development in recent times has come on top of the
agenda of federal, state and local government in Nigeria .This
re-awakening is justified for obvious reasons. It is common knowledge
that Nigeria communities have been showing no appreciable improvement in
the provisions of basic needs like food, house, medicate educational
facilitates and provisions of social amenities like roads, water supply
electricity e.t.c.
This situation has steadily degenerated into
state of poverty diseases, filth, ignorance, unemployment for the
majority of the people and their coping mechanism drastically eroded and
is at the brink of collapse.
In the third National development plan
(1975-1980) the country„s rural development policy was for the first
time incorporated in the framework of national development. The policy
stipulated that the main objectives of the rural development are to
increase rural productivity and income, diversify rural economy through
the provision of basic social amenities such as health centers, pipe
borne water and feeder roads .Also the establishment of local government
areas in 1976 by the military government down to the grassroots in
order to enhance full participation of the community members. But this
has not made transformatory impact; it rather seems to have aggravated
the problems. Rural areas (communities) still remain in deplorable
conditions.
Under the present administration, the reviewed community
development policy seeks to build the enthusiasm among the various
partners involved in rural development. This study focuses on women who
have also been recently affirmed as principal prerequisites for a
successful approach to rural development.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]Women empowerment is all encompassing, so this work will want to narrow it to the subject of women development and the impact of skill acquisition and economic empowerment. This topic has generated so much controversy in Nigeria, and the debate centers on appropriate type of development and whether they would help stimulate women toward their development. There is much ambivalence within every society as to the proper place of women in all the vital spheres of life. However, there seems to be a ... Continue reading---
