2021 INTERNATIONAL WOMEN DAY
THEME: CHOOSE TO CHALLENGE
It’s another lovely opportunity, a day set apart specially for a wonderful group of people known as women. Every year the world stops to consider what wonderful benefits they have contributed. The theme this 2021 is a call to challenge. It is a great privilege to that ability to make that great choice to challenge. But how can one challenge what one is not aware of? Are we aware of injustice or various abnormalities that the female gender has experienced and still encounter? As we celebrate the international women’s day today, I would like to remind all Ebonyi women and girls in Diaspora as well as all over the world at large that we must be aware of the imbalances around us and make an informed and concerted effort to challenge this. Not knowing, makes it impossible to challenge.
The first thing we must challenge is the assumption that when a lady speaks up passionately for what she believes, she is aggressive! Being assertive and articulate does not equate to the wrong assumptions out there. It is time we stood to challenge all forms of stereotypical ideologies out there. Loads of which some female folks still put each other through. The fact that a woman has a quiet and calm temperament does not mean she is an angel or that she is foolish. She is just who she is.
I am challenging you all to challenge yourself to be the best version of YOU! See the world as your oysters, empower yourself more than ever before considering the ongoing COVID19 situation in the world. Be challenged to see great opportunities in the world of entrepreneurship, technology and investments. Be challenged to create a world full of well-rounded individuals and this can be achieved in your own corners. For the single ladies, enjoy singleness, for the mothers, raise champions and when its seems not to be working, don’t see your self as a failure, be satisfied in the fact that you did your best, for the teachers, write history on the heart of your students, for the leaders, lead with a vison knowing that some people may never encounter anyone as special as you. To all the wonderful people out there who continue to challenge the wrong status quo of an assumed second-class status for women, thank you and keep up the good work. You will remain our most trusted allies.
Choose to Challenge. That still but firm voice you raise may be the one that makes the final change!
Happy International Women’s day.
Author:
Elizabeth Umoke,
Chair of Ebonyi Women's Alliance in Diaspora UK
As a woman and a member of Ebonyi Women Alliance in Diaspora, I align with the keynote address of our Chairwoman, Mrs Elizabeth Umoke.
I choose to Challenge the status quo in most parts of Nigeria and Africa where childless women are demeaned, where girl child's are treated as second class, where widows are dispossessed of their rightful inheritance and treated like pariah, I choose to Challenge.
Tina Oby-Onyia