Can Technology Help Keep Women Safe?

This is the link to my article published in Premium Times of February 1, 2022

 Can technology help keep women safe?

The Golden Art of Being Grateful for What You Have and Where You Are At

We need to recapture those innocent moments of childhood when everything was perfect as is; not warped, not tainted. We did not have worry lines engraven  on our faces like a weather-beaten map due to the incessant gripe  over  that out-of-reach new house, car, clothing, job, vacation, visa, pregnancy, money or whatever else consumes our minds now.

The world was beautiful. We had no  notion of class,  the hole in the ozone layer or the dangers of terrorism, war, gender-based violence, and  the countless incurable diseases lurking around  the corner.  

We felt safe,  secure and contented.  Every little thing was a delight. We would wear our  orange peel garland with sheer undiluted joy and delight  as though  we were  queens  adorning our tiaras studded with diamonds. 

Good enough, this time of year marks a period of meditation, introspection, stock-taking and planning as we prepare to step into 2022 by faith. Perhaps, we should prioritise in our goal-setting  this year end,  the determination to work as hard and as smart  as possible, be goal- and success-driven, be loving  but also to trust God absolutely for those things that seem so out-of-reach and when situations spiral out  of control. At the close of 2020, how on earth as a mere human could I have imagined or even planned for the challenges I encountered in 2021? God-alone  pulled me out of the fires of life.

So, I will plan, I will strategize but I will put my trust in Jesus, the giver of life, the giver of all good thing,  for the rest of the package I cannot sense, see or even imagine. 

Let's knockout high blood pressure with this simple resolve. God says, be anxious for NOTHING. Pray hard, give thanks...enjoy shalom peace which completely defies understanding.

Do have a happy, astonishingly beautiful and peaceful 2022.

The Importance of Responding Appropriately to Teenagers' Distress Calls for Help

Sometimes, when the business of life becomes overwhelming, I retreat into my cocoon - myself. I consume myself in movies. In my church, we were fasting almost the whole of December. Though I truly desired to fast, I could not because I was on medication for most of the period. My pastor did mention other kinds of fasts – for instance, social media and Netflix fast. I thought I was an excellent candidate for these. It was good, not losing myself totally in movies but being introspective and meditative. It was a great experience. A few interesting ideas came out of that season of my life.

Well, following the fast, I watched two great movies on Netflix that inspired deep thought and from which I learned new lessons. The first one on my list is All the Bright Places (Netflix, 2020) with Elle Fanning and Justice Smith.  First of all, this would not be a movie of choice for me. A love affair between two high school teenagers - Theodore Finch and Violet Markey? No, that would not be a movie of choice for me at all. I had my fill of movies like Grease, decades ago.  Especially not when I was forewarned of suicide – I did not need further depressing. But as the movie progressed, I was drawn in most especially by Finch who was routinely referred to as ‘the freak’. As we are well aware, teenagers can be notoriously insensitive to peers who do not conform to what is considered their norm. Even as adults, it takes a practised eye to identify the deep distress call for help from a young person who appears to break most of the rules of the game of living, as we adults have established them. Viewers are given the rare privilege of seeing ‘freak’ Finch through the eyes of Violet Markey. Finch lured her back to life from the verge of suicide following her sister’s death in a car accident.  

As a romantic, you would fall in love with the chivalrous, poetic, and creative Finch in spite of his highly unorthodox methods of wooing his classmate back to life after bereavement.

A public relations project highlighting the scenic beauty of the State of Indiana in the United States, All the Bright Places, was much more than that. It drew attention to the potentially damaging impact of abusive parents on a young mind. In the case of Finch, his Father scarred him to the point where he could not cope with the demands of a ‘normal’ life. He needed the kind of love, care, and medical attention that his single mother and only sister were unable to provide; neither could the school administration bridge the gap. 

In my country, a young man displaying the kind of discordant behaviour that Finch did would have been long expelled or at best suspended from school. He probably would have received a lot of discipline and may have been caned severally or taken to the church to be exorcised of demons. Who knows, these kinds of disciplines do have their uses but I am not entirely sure they would have solved the problem of ‘freak’ Finch.

For all his misdemeanours, Finch was a smart, sensitive, caring, non-violent, and non-abusive youth. He did not indulge in alcohol or drugs. The movie made me reflect on my days as a teenager in high school and later as an undergraduate. Teenage years can be excruciatingly challenging physically, emotionally, psychologically, and mentally. Sexuality is another area of utter bewilderment.  As a teenager, one has so many hang-ups and living in a constantly tumultuous and puzzling world. Now, add globalization and social media to the perplexities of our teenage populations. 

Caring, attentive, listening and less judgmental adults would really help the young ones navigate the shark-infested waters of growing into adulthood in today’s world. We need to take more seriously issues of mental/psychological health.

Well, when Finch snatched his classmate away from the clutches of suicide, I heaved a huge sigh of relief thinking that was the exit of suicide from the movie. Sadly, I was very wrong… I wept.

I was actually going to discuss two movies but now, I have to discuss the second movie – Angel Eyes – in my next post.

Can gender diversity in staffing impact the growth of your enterprise?

Implementing a diversity and inclusivity strategy in workforce recruitment is an increasingly important decision for business success.  The strategy is of interest not only to social entrepreneurs and global development agencies but important for firms, large and small; local and international. 

“Diversity is any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another… it’s about empowering people by respecting and appreciating what makes them different, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education, and national origin. (https://globaldiversitypractice.com/what-is-diversity-inclusion/

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) draw strong linkages between gender equality and poverty reduction, for instance. Gender inequality robs women especially of opportunities, thus keeping them poor.

Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels

Are you a business owner, CEO, or employer of labour? Is having a diverse workforce an important consideration for you? Is this something you believe in or do you consider it a fad that really has no bearing on the success of your business? Do you consider it of no direct relevance to the sustainability and growth of your enterprise?

According to Research: When Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive - by Turban, Wu and Zhang in the Harvard Business Review of 11^th February 2019, countries and industries that consider gender diversity as important enjoy the benefits.  Nevertheless, the data also suggests that for:

diversity to work, workers have to buy into the value of diversity, not just hear some rules about it. Diversity creates positive benefits when people believe in its intrinsic value. They can’t just see gender inclusion as an obligation. (https://hbr.org/2019/02/research-when-gender-diversity-makes-firms-more-productive).

What this means is that if a diversity and social inclusion strategy is to yield expected results, it is important to build/nurture a culture and an environment that genuinely embraces and respects diversity. The employer of labour will likely need to implement specific interventions, perhaps capacity building, to achieve this.

As Turban et al., found in their research “When countries and industries don’t value women equally, women working in those countries likely don’t feel psychologically safe speaking up in their organizations.”   Thus, women who feel excluded may hesitate to share innovative ideas that they have. They may not have the confidence to speak up in meetings and other fora where staff brainstorm and share ideas.  “When that happens, everyone loses” Turban et al., observe.   

What are your thoughts? Do share your experience.

 

A Pandemic? : Over 50,000 Women Die Annually Due to Birthing Challenges in Nigeria

Photo from rawpixel

It was sobering to look up figures of annual maternal deaths in Nigeria and to compare these with COVID-19 deaths to-date. According to the report issued for the ninth day of September 2020 by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the country has recorded about 1,070 COVID-19 deaths to date (between February and September 2020, a period of about seven months).  Figures on maternal deaths in Nigeria from 1990 to 2015 indicate that over 50,000 women died annually according to a report, “Maternal Mortality” by Max Roser and Hannah  Ritchie (https://bit.ly/33iYmQL). 

The report shows that in 2015, 58,000 deaths were recorded and from 1998 to 2001,   62,000 women died annually.  Over 1.5m women died in Nigeria between 1990 and 2015 if you sum up the yearly figures.  “A  Nigerian woman has a 1 in 22 lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum/post-abortion; whereas in the most developed countries, the lifetime risk is 1 in 4900” (https://bit.ly/3mfqn4a).   

 Should the pregnancy-related deaths of women in Nigeria not be classified as a pandemic, given the scale of it? The World Health Organisation defines a  pandemic as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people” (https://bit.ly/3hjl7sD ). Sadly, women have been dying for decades in Africa and other parts of the developing world even though conditions have improved remarkably in the developed economies.

Besides India and Pakistan, three out-of-five countries with the highest number of maternal deaths in 2015 were African: Nigeria (58,000); Democratic Republic of Congo (22,000);  and Ethiopia (11,000). India and Pakistan recorded 45,000 and 9,700, deaths respectively,  Roser and Ritchie note in their report.   Semantics aside, whether we classify these deaths as due to a pandemic or not, “What could be more tragic than a mother losing her life in the moment that she is giving life to her newborn?” Roser and Ritchie ask in their report.  I agree that the situation is truly grim and depressing and we all need to act to stop avoidable deaths. 

On September 3, 2020, Maternal Figures  - a database of maternal health interventions implemented in Nigeria over a thirty-year period was launched with funding support from The Brown Institute of Media Innovation, amongst other funders. "Developed as a research tool for journalists, the database contains verified information including funding sources, contact information, programme reports, and more" (https://maternalfigures.com/)  This is certainly a welcome intervention in the fight to make Nigeria safer for motherhood.

What are your thoughts? How can we further curb preventable deaths?

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Maternal Mortality: the death of either a pregnant woman or death of a woman within 42 days of delivery, miscarriage, termination or ectopic pregnancy providing the death is associated with pregnancy or its treatment. https://bit.ly/3mbCsYj.

Reference

Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2013) - "Maternal Mortality". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/maternal-mortality' [Online Resource]