2023: Need For Women In Politics To Start Breaking The Glass Ceiling (OPINION)

By Isaac Asabor

As gathered from Statista, an online data platform, “In 2020, Nigeria’s female population amounted to approximately 101.67 million, while that of their male counterpart amounted to approximately 104.47 million”. Despite the foregoing data, women are still unacceptably underrepresented in politics, diplomacy, and positions of power. Taking into account the increasing number of women and girls breaking through the glass ceiling in various fields of human endeavor, it is surprising that they are far from having a fair share of equal representation in political positions with inherent powers and attendant authorities like their male counterparts.

There is no denying the fact that when the foregoing is contextually put into consideration that the tendency to ask, “Why do women often have to face disparaging underestimation from their male counterparts in the realm of politics?” “Why are women often made to suffer from ageism and sexism as well as harassments in the hands of the male folks?”  “Why is the way a woman got to position of power so often scrutinized, as if they could not have made it on their own?”  “Why do societies and the media care more about what women wear and what they look like, rather than what they have upstairs and their collective ability to contribute their quotas to national growth?” “And why are there so many double standards when it comes to putting women at the top?” The foregoing questions, no doubt, are not misnomers. Rather, they are salient questions that need to be asked by any fair-minded personality.

Also as gathered from Statista, “Women in Nigerian politics are incredibly too few. In the National Parliament, there are since 2019 only 29 women (about six percent of the total), including both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Men, instead, are 440. Nevertheless, there was an increase compared to the cabinet 1990-2003”. Apart from Virginia Etiaba, who became the first female governor in Nigeria in 2006, and who lasted only three months in office before resuming her old position as deputy governor of Anambra state, no woman has ever being a governor under Nigeria’s democratic dispensation since 1999 when Nigeria adopted democracy as a system of government. Rather, women have continued to play the second fiddle as deputy governors, and even at that, only few of them have risen to such position.

To most misogynists, women will look too fierce to them today, and tomorrow, they would look too soft to them to be in politics. At other times, they are criticized for not having children, while in the next second, they get criticized for being too family-oriented to be elected or appointed to top-level political positions.

Analyzed from the foregoing perspective, it is little wonder that on the traffic, a misogynist is naturally disgusted seeing any woman driving a car. To him, all women on steering wheel are bad drivers. When he sees any woman arguing with a man he would sigh and instantly mutter in Pidgin, “I know say Na woman, e no go gree” without having any understanding of the issue been argued upon. A misogynist, for instance, shares the notion that women police are unforgiving and that they do not accept bribe. By extension, all women security agents are seen as wicked, unforgiving and uncompromising. To a misogynist, any woman seen on top of the hierarchy of any organizations might have rose to height through the figurative ladder that is inherent in her “bottom power”.

At this juncture, it is not unforeseen for a misogynist to conjecture that this writer is suffering from Obsessive Love Disorder (OLD). For the sake of clarity, “OLD” is a condition in which one person feels an overwhelming obsessive desire to possess and protect another”, and in this context women. Well, painting this writer in such a negative light cannot be argued against as he has daughters, wife, cousins, nieces and female acquaintances. So, why should he withhold the power that is inherent in his pen to advocate on their behalf for their rights?

Though there is a school of thought that holds the notion that women are their own worst enemies as they always refrain from contesting for elective positions by each passing political dispensation. If true, that would not change the fact that women face many political obstacles.

The discrimination against the woman by the misogynist is so pervasive that it is at the moment negatively reflecting on the proportion of women holding political offices across various tiers of government in our country. The lean number of the women that are today holding various political offices were appointed, and not elected.

The reason why women hold positions of appointment more than elective positions cannot be far-fetched. Most women are seemingly afraid to vie for elective positions because as it were, they would not be voted for by all the misogynists among the electorate. Most women that are today in active politics literarily rode on the wings of their husbands, who are no doubt politically powerful, or rode on the goodwill which their profession bestowed on them.

If a woman is married to a man from a different state of origin, she would automatically find herself in a dilemma. She cannot easily declare her intention to run for any elective political position within the political constituencies of her husband as she would be rejected by her in-laws who are invariably misogynists on the ground that she is not a direct indigene or “daughter of the soil”. On the other hand, her relations would also reject her from vying for any political office in her own fatherland for the mere fact that she is married to a non-indigene, and in line with the tradition, expected to pick her party ticket from her husband’s political constituency. The foregoing is how frustrating it has been for women who wanted to participate in politics.

The foregoing summarizes one of the biggest political problems women are today facing. I suggest this issue should be constitutionally addressed to protect women from being marginalized in this democratic dispensation.

While it is expedient to, in this context, urge women in politics to start breaking the glass ceiling in anticipation of the forthcoming general elections in 2023, it is salient to also urge men in politics to stop frustrating the women by opening the electoral space for them at all levels, come 2023.