By Lamin Manjang
Although women's rights have seen a significant positive change in the last decade, it remains a critical topic of conversation across various sectors in different parts of the world. According to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres, "Progress towards equal power and equal rights for women remains elusive. No country has achieved gender equality, and the COVID-19 crisis threatens to erode the limited gains that have been made."
Women's
global economic development role provides significant progress and impact,
charting new opportunities for women to continue to change the status quo. Even
though we continue to record very many successes by women, there is still a lot
more that can be achieved, especially in representing more women in the
workforce.
According
to the United Nations (2020), only 50% of working-age women are in the labour
market for more than twenty years. This means that more women need access to resources
and opportunities to break stereotypes resting in labour market positions. As a
Bank, one of the ways we commit to addressing this is how we strategically
continue to support some of the UN Sustainable development goals that empower
women, especially in this new-normal era.
I
echo the words of the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres "The
Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals and efforts to
recover better from the pandemic offer a chance to transform the lives of women
and girls, today and tomorrow…". We see this as an invitation to work
collaboratively with the United Nation as corporate organisations and
individuals to achieve growth and sustainable progress for women.
In
line with this year's International Women's Day theme, #ChooseToChallenge, our forward-thinking
approach to initiatives and programs continues to deliver sustainable value for
women, especially in a country like Nigeria, where women account for 49.34% of
the total population. We see that the
fewer income-generating opportunities for the larger population may leave women
in an even more financially vulnerable position, hence our motivation to set up
various initiatives such as the Women in
Technology Incubator program, which launched in Nigeria 2019, following
successful launches in New York, Kenya and the UAE
This
program aims to support female entrepreneurship with the call for increased
gender representation and diversity in tech and for more opportunities for
women to develop entrepreneurial and leadership expertise. Also referred to as Women in Tech, the incubator supports
early-to-mid stage professionals in technology and business sectors to have the
requisite domain knowledge, experience, and perseverance to deliver results. Other
markets equally running the program include Pakistan, Bahrain, Zambia, and
Ghana
Our
goal is to enhance women's role through business incubation and generate
business outputs that improve existing business and women entrepreneurs'
capacity. Additionally, this program
promotes and creates awareness about women business incubation globally and
strengthens cooperation and network building between the various incubators.
This ripple effect will cause an increase in the investment that different
incubators receive, therefore integrating and developing more women who are
part of this program. It has also created awareness about incubation challenges
specific to Nigerian women and outlined various activities required to improve women-led
enterprises' technological infrastructure and structural support for Women
Incubation. To date in Nigeria, we have invested over $250,000 in this program
and are committed to doing more to sustain the program for posterity
We
understand that investing in Nigerian youth through education and creating
productive and remunerative employment is the only way to support this growing demographic.
Additionally, SCB sees the need to do its part in empowering the estimated 600
million adolescent girls in the developing world. Hence, the introduction of
our Global Goal programme to Nigeria in 2011.
Goal tackles
female empowerment by imparting adolescent girls in rural communities with life
skills through sports training in partnership with leading global non-profit
organisations. We have strategically designed this programme for girls between
12 and 18 who live in under-served communities by enrolling them in sessions
typically offered weekly for ten months. The girls are being taught critical
facts about health, communication, rights, and managing their finances. All
this is done to understand how to share the knowledge with their friends,
family, and communities.
To
ensure that more girls are taught these essential skills, girls who complete
the Goal programme and display exceptional leadership qualities are
invited to become Goal Champions, making them eligible to receive training to
deliver the Goal curriculum to their peers. Since its inception in 2006, the
Goal programme has reached more than 525,000 girls and young women worldwide.
Without gender
equality, efforts to empower women will only go so far. For example, our global
Futuremakers initiative is set-to up tackle this and promote financial
inclusion across our markets. We aim to raise US$50 million between 2019 and
2023, needed to empower the next generation to learn, earn and grow. This
augments our desire to continuously #ChooseToChallenge as a Bank.
Our method is simple;
to contribute to Sustainable Economic Growth by investing in strategic
leadership training programmes under the youth's employability project.
Globally, we recently partnered with Young Business International (YBI) to
support young entrepreneurs hit by the economic impact of Covid-19. The project is part of our
Futuremakers by Standard Chartered global initiative to tackle inequality.
Bringing it home
to Nigeria, our implementation partner, FATE Foundation, will provide
holistic support through various initiatives, including Digital Transformation
Workshop, Resilience-building Series, and Remote Consulting & Advisor
services to be delivered virtually by our employees to 2,000 entrepreneurs
across Nigeria. We will specifically target entrepreneurs between the ages of
18-35, who the crisis has hardest hit.
Between 2019 and
2020, we had also invested over USD50,000 in work-ready employability project
training and equipping nearly 200 Nigerian youths with skills and resources to
aid their career development journeys. Empowering the future is a gift that
keeps on giving, and for us, we intend to continue to do this for a very long
time.
For every woman or girl-child not empowered economically, our work is not done. We will continue to grow our current programmes and initiatives, partner with similar organisations, and start new ones in areas we have not yet covered. We strive for equal representation as we #ChooseToChallenge this year and always.
Lamin Manjang is the Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited
References
Av.sc.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://av.sc.com/corp-en/content/docs/StandardChartered-Goal-Programme-Report-compressed.pdf> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
BBC News. 2021. Giving Women A Voice In Era Of SDGs Development By Dayo Aderugbo - BBC News. [online] Available at: <https://bbc.com.ng/2020/03/10/giving-women-a-voice-in-era-of-sdgs-development-by-dayo-aderugbo/> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
International Women's Day. 2021. IWD 2021 campaign theme: #ChooseToChallenge. [online] Available at: <https://www.internationalwomensday.com/theme> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
Nations, U., 2021. 'Women's job market participation stagnating at less than 50% for the past 25 years, finds UN report | United Nations. [online] United Nations. Available at: <https://www.un.org/en/desa/women%E2%80%99s-job-market-participation-stagnating-less-50-past-25-years-finds-un-report> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
Sc.com. 2021. Standard Chartered Sustainability Review - Goal. [online] Available at: <https://www.sc.com/sustainability-review-10/leading-the-way-in-communities/community-investment/goal.html> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
Standard Chartered Nigeria. 2021. Standard Chartered Nigeria | Here for Good. [online] Available at: <https://www.sc.com/ng/> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
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THISDAYLIVE. 2021. Standard Chartered Announces Winners of its Women in Technology Incubator Project. [online] Available at: <https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/06/02/standard-chartered-announces-winners-of-its-women-in-technology-incubator-project/> [Accessed 16 March 2021].
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