By Adeyinka Adeniran
Researchers, scholars, policy makers, vulnerable groups, business owners among other stakeholders have called on the government to consider making policies, adopting research finding and effecting frameworks that will support self employed young women in the country.
This, the groups said became imperative I’m view of the hardship and challenges self employed young women go through as the bulk of the 86 percent workforce in the informal sector.
The stakeholders made the call over the weekend at a film screening of the digital stories of resilience of self employed women in Nigeria under the project name “Advancing Resiliency in Self Employed women in Nigeria” codenamed Arise and Win project.
The film screening which held at the Paul Hendrickse Hall, College of Medicine, UI, University College Hospital, Ibadan premises focused on “Understanding the Gendered Impact of Covid-19 on Young Self-Employed Nigerian Women and Co-Producing Solutions that Foster Better Systems and Wellbeing”, as the broader topic.
The study was led by researchers from the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, in collaboration with Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Montreal, Canada, and the Oyo State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Inclusion, an initiative funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
The digital storytelling initiative provided a platform for self-employed young women in Oyo state to share their stories of significant disruptive life experiences and how they have been able to overcome the difficulties.
In the welcome remarks, the Provost, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan (CoMUI), Professor Olayinka Omigbodun who is the Principal Investigator on the research project said
Omigbodun, a Professor of Psychiatry said the project conducted a gendered situational analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and other significant life events on self-employed young Nigerian women, adding that the ultimate goal is to co-develop interventions that enhance their resilience in the face of challenges while improving their health and work outcomes.
She added that as part of the project, the team organized a series of workshops for 10 self-employed women to develop their stories and have worked with them to produce their stories as short 5-minute videos, expressing optimism that by sharing the stories, the team can inspire other self-employed women, enlighten the public about the experiences and struggles of self-employed women as well as advocate for better support for them.
Speaking on the findings, Professor Omigbodun urged the government to take the lead in partnering with researchers in a bid to save the vast majority of young self employed women saying the future of the country is in funding and implementing research findings.
She said “I think government needs to realize that for the future of this country, apart from early primary, secondary, tertiary education and funding education properly, they should support research in our tertiary institutions, so that we can have transformation, innovations, creativity. Then we can start to discover things and produce but research is the foundation of any thriving nation.
“Government should find out what we are doing, reach out to us so we continue to partner with us and work with us so that when we have our products government should bring us to the fore and help us to scale up.
“We are looking at research, policies, interventions that will cause self employed young women to thrive in Nigeria and the government has to be at the forefront of this.
“If 86 percent of women workforce are in self employment, that is a huge investment and many of them are youths. So, those are the kinds of areas we need to start up with. How do we support these people to thrive? If they thrive, the community will thrive. What sort of health benefit do we have for them, health insurance, what kind of loan support can we provide for them, and if they are been abused? That’s a major problem we have.
“A lot of women are been abused: sexually, physically, emotionally, financially etc in this country, what is the law enforcement doing about it? What are the lawyers, the judges doing about it, because all these things impact the mental health. So, we need to address these issues holistically and we are starting the conversation through this our digital story telling.”
Also speaking, the lead Post doctoral Fellow, Dr Iyeyinka Kusi-Mensah said some of the significant disruptive life experience for the self employed young women are things like child birth, family emergencies, health emergencies, loss of their offices spaces, evictions, lack of capital to be able to run their business and lack of support.
She said there’s a great need for interventions to support self employed women because they are integral part of the labour force, which made up about 86 percent of the workforce but with many of them lacking the support to be able to fulfill their potentials.
She said some of the interventions can be broadly categories into four including: capacity building; health and wellness interventions; social protection interventions among others.
In their separate remarks, two of the story tellers: Owoade Oluwatomisin, Creative Director, Abeni Prints and Aminat Aderayo Animashaun, CEO Derayo Vocational Limited among other stakeholders at the event while challenging other self-employed young women to takena cue from their stories of resilience also urged the government to consider making and implementing policies that would help small business holders, especially rural women to thrive.
