The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has called for the election of more women into political offices, not just to make up the numbers, but to ensure that the female perspective is incorporated into the policy-making process at all levels.
Citing data from UN Women, she said only 3.6 per cent of seats in the Nigerian parliament were held by women, while the proportion of elected seats held by women in deliberative bodies of local government across the country was 9.8 per cent as of 2021.
She spoke at the International Professional Women Conference in Abuja, Thursday, with the theme, ‘The Roles of Professional Women in Nation-building.’
Ahmed, who congratulated the Society of Women in Taxation, a body representing the female members of the Chartered Institute of Taxation in Nigeria (CITN), for organising the conference, emphasised that regardless of their positions in the workplace or in the larger society, all women were critical to nation-building.
She submitted that women should be principal contributors to national development as they represent about half of the global population, regretting that statistics show that women are not proportionately represented in leadership roles in government and the corporate world.
Ahmed said: “According to data from UN Women, only 3.6 per cent of seats in the Nigerian parliament were held by women while the proportion of elected seats held by women in deliberative bodies of local government across the country was 9.8 per cent as of 2021.
“There is widespread acknowledgement that ‘representation matters’. For this reason, it is important that more women are elected to political office, not just to tick a gender box, but to ensure that the female perspective is incorporated into the policy-making process at all levels.
“By having more women taking on leadership roles in politics, young girls are also encouraged to envision a future where they can aspire to such roles and even outperform their female forerunners.”
The minister stated that under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, the federal government had developed and is supporting targeted interventions in the access to financing and capacity-building for women-owned businesses, particularly Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), the MSME Survival Fund and the Women Empowerment Fund.
She added that the government was also boosting financial inclusion and financial literacy among women and girls, particularly since women’s financial inclusion is a key driver of inclusive and sustainable development.
The government, Ahmed stressed, is also improving human capital development outcomes for women and girls through targeted government spending in line with government priorities in key sectors including health and education, ensuring that fiscal policies and public financial management processes are more gender-sensitive particularly in the areas of budgeting, implementation, as well as monitoring and evaluation (M&E).
