OAU women on the move (1),- By Kehinde Yusuf
*Photo: Prof Kehinde Yusuf*
International Women’s Day (IWD) 2024 was on Friday, 8 March. According to the IWD website, the precursor to IWD was the 1908 campaign and protests in which “15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.”
This march for equity and fairness resonated beyond America and in 1910 at an “International Conference of Working Women which was held in Copenhagen … a woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day – to press for their demands.
The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs – and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament – greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women’s Day was the result.”
The first IWD – “a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women” – was marked in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1911 supported by over a million people. As noted by the website, “IWD is an official holiday in many countries … The tradition sees men honoring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc. with flowers and small gifts.” The general theme for IWD 2024 is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”, and the campaign theme is “Inspire Inclusion”. According to the United Nations (UN), “One of the key pillars of Inspire Inclusion is the promotion of diversity in leadership and decision-making positions. … By providing support and resources, women can be empowered to overcome obstacles and achieve their full potential.”
As part of celebrating IWD this year, this column today focuses on women in academia, specifically, in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, with which the column is most familiar, and which is a university which has recorded remarkable achievements in gender issues. The celebration has been done through the following interview with a woman of note in the university, Professor Funmi Soetan.
Please, come along.
Nuances: Good morning, Ma. Please, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Soetan: Thank you. My name is Funmi Soetan, a Professor of Economics, specialising in Industrial Economics, Business Economics and Gender Economics. I’m very passionate about my faith in Christ, and I’m grateful to God for the opportunity to have spent almost 38 years at Obafemi Awolowo University in teaching, research and service. I’m happily married, with children and grandchildren.
Nuances: March 8 is International Women’s Day. What’s the significance of this Day to Nigeria?
Soetan: The UN adopted it as a day to highlight gender inequalities and celebrate progress and identify challenges. That started in 1974. Nigeria is a signatory to several UN conventions on gender equality, but when it comes to domestication we have a very poor track record. We have wide gaps in several areas of socio-economic development such as governance, access to resources, especially finance, and, worse still, maternal mortality. Nigeria has one of the highest burdens of maternal mortality in the world; I think the second or the third highest.
IWD 2024 presents an opportunity for Nigeria to assess progress towards gender equality. As we know, the Sustainable Development Goals which are the successors of the Millennium Development Goals have the theme of inclusiveness that leaves no one behind. And if we are going to leave no one behind, certainly, it will not be women who make up at least fifty percent of our population. If we leave them behind, we are leaving development behind. So, this is another opportunity for Nigeria to spotlight, highlight and bring gender equality on the front burner and take a critical look at the challenges and how to address them, so that we can have development that is truly sustainable and inclusive.
Nuances: As a very senior member of the OAU community, a very influential one for that matter, what institutional measures do you think OAU has put in place to enhance the prospects of women on this campus?
Soetan: One of the most enduring institutional mechanisms put in place by Obafemi Awolowo University to protect the interests of women in the community is the Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy. It gives me such joy that finally Council adopted it and it was well-launched by the immediate past Vice-Chancellor Professor Eyitayo Ogunbodede.
Interestingly, I got into ASH, as I call it, Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy, by default, being a woman. When I was hired in 1986, barely had I settled down that I was constantly being drafted into sexual harassment cases. And the last one that I served on was so messy; not only was it messy, it involved me personally, because the culprit sued me. He verbally assaulted me at the zoo car park.
When I got home, I told my husband, and my husband said, “What have you done about it? Go and report to your Dean. Make a formal report, because next time, he may beat you up.” So, I reported to the Dean and the report was forwarded to Professor Ogunbodede, and another panel was set up on the same man, and he was found culpable. That was the eighth panel in nine years on this same person. So, I had personal experience. When he found out that he was found culpable by that committee, he put a notice on my door asking me to retract my statement or he would sue me. And he went ahead and sued me for five million naira.
The case came up at the High Court here in Ile-Ife. I was shocked. I hadn’t done anything wrong; why was I being sued? Then I could feel for the students how they would feel oppressed and disempowered. So, my husband said, “We have a good case, but if we don’t get a good lawyer and rely just on the university lawyer, we will lose this case.” So, we hired a lawyer for two-fifty thousand naira then (around 2008/2009), out of pocket. And when he found that the case was getting hot, he stepped down. But see all it cost us.
So, that gave me the burden to pursue the protection of the sexual rights of our students. And the opportunity came when I was appointed Director, Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies, in 2010. The first thing I did, you can guess, when I resumed, was to ask the staff on ground, “Do you have an Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy?” And they said, “No.” And I said, “You have to get one.” The rest is now history.
We mobilised the whole community including religious leaders in the mosques, in the churches, union leaders, staff and students, to come on board. And the policy was drafted, but put in the drawer for so long. Then I got into the Governing Council in 2017 and I kept asking, “Where’s the Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy?” That was the opportunity to push for the Council to adopt and back it up. And it happened while I was still there. So, if that is all I have been able to do, I’m happy, because the university started to implement it. Thankfully, when the Akindele case came up, Professor Ogunbodede called me and said, “Madam, we’re in trouble. BBC, VOA, everybody is on our case.” I said, “We have a policy.” So, that policy rescued us.
Nuances: So, is it your general view that these measures have been effective? For example, how much attempt has been made to make our curricula gender-sensitive?
Soetan: Yes. Remember that we worked together on this under Professor Simi Afonja. The good news is that the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies runs postgraduate courses, but the bad news is that that is all. It has not sort of percolated through the whole university. And again, under the auspices of UNESCO, I was hired as Lead Consultant for the BMAS (Benchmark Minimum Academic Standard) in Gender Studies, and we got all University Directors of Gender Studies together in Abuja, and NUC, UNESCO, we prepared the BMAS, but they didn’t implement it. We even said that it could start from making sure that there was a gender component in the General Studies/Special Electives. We’re still waiting.
Nuances: Thank you, Ma. Which additional measures do you think OAU needs to put in place, moving forward, regarding gender?
Soetan: I think we’ve mentioned the key areas – curriculum, we’ve mentioned harassment policy, and also mainstreaming gender. We must mainstream gender at all levels including administration, not only in terms of numbers, so that we would not be like a bird flying with one wing. We need to be more inclusive, and therefore have in place policies that are more sustainable.
Nuances: What do you envision for International Women’s Day 2025 in OAU?
Soetan: One, a reduction in sexual harassment through zero-tolerance such that both staff and students would know that this is a no-go area. Perpetrators, either males or females, would be brought to book and victims would be protected. That is my desire. Two, gender-mainstreaming of our curriculum would be undertaken, starting from General Studies courses, thus highlighting gender as a key area of scholarship at all levels.
Nuances: Thank you very much.
One quite interesting point that can be inferred from Professor Funmi Soetan’s views in this interview is that, in her gender scholarship and gender policy activism, she got solid support from her husband, Professor Olufemi Soetan, who is a very senior ophthalmologist. This amazing spousal support mirrors the one which the icon, doyen and Mother of Gender Studies at OAU, Professor Similolu Adunni Afonja, got from her husband, Professor Adeniyi Afonja, a Professor of Metalurgical Engineering and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at OAU.
He was there for her as she set out to nurse the acorn of the “Programme in Women’s Studies” of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 1986 to grow into today’s oak – the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies – a pivot of gender research, gender consciousness-raising and gender policy activism approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC) in 2002, during her time as Director.
Through seminars and other programmes, staff, both female and male, from different academic disciplines across the university, were brought together by Professor Simi Afonja to examine different aspects of the lives of women and girls. She invited me into the Centre as a Fellow on account of my research interest in “Language and Gender” or “Women and Language”.
It is a testimony to Professor Simi Afonja’s solid foundational work, her foresight, tenacity and organisational prowess that today her successors as Directors of the Centre have a template which continues to facilitate both intellectual and infrastructural development.
This column today is dedicated to her in continuation of the celebrations of IWD 2024.
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