Not Second Class Citizen

Get married and have babies: that is the ultimate ambition of the average Nigerian woman. The only other option would be to become a nun, but that is only open to Catholics. The next priority would have been to have sons, but that was before women finally obtained more self worth in recent years after more and more successful women were made known in our society. I have never been an average Nigerian woman, this much to my family’s disappointment.

All my life I have witnessed women being treated as second class citizens in their own country. I suppose that is where my passion for women empowerment and equal treatment for women began. I live in a society where everything a man do is right and women are not meant to do or say most things because she would be thought of as loose and therefore,” unmarriable”. Strange that most of these restrictions are enforced more by women than men. The more educated of them stress the virtues every worthy female needs to fulfill their destiny of being a married women with children, stressing painful period cramps, labor without any form of medication and or the occasional female genital mutilation is what being a woman is all about.

I am inspired by women who set the pace for others. They motivate me to become more than what society has deemed acceptable for young women like me and enable me strive to achieve what others might think impossible. I feel ashamed that I do so little, if anything at all to promote my femininity and womanhood to my countrymen. To stand up to the norms and restrictions that was laid down even before the British colonization. I see those women in World Pulse. Women who are tired of the status quo and discriminatory acts of the people around them. Women tired of being silent. Women like Jensine Larsen who are brave and stand against any challenge before her to start something truly life changing and inspirational, touching thousands of women and men all over the world.

The Voices of Our Future application gives me the unique opportunity to learn by driving myself to tell the stories of women not just in Nigeria, but of women all over the world. I have always felt that I have much to say but could not due to what I once thought were inadequate avenues to speak through. I see myself in the fore front of media where I shall have the voice to speak for those who cannot do so for themselves. I want my experience with PulseWire to be a medium by which I shall gain the knowledge to be a woman respected for her work on women development, making my impact seen from the changed belief of who the “typical” African woman is. A haven and an inspiration for the average and not so average Nigerian woman to grow and reach the potential we were all meant to attain.