The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has advocated for fair treatment of women, urging men to give women access to leadership positions.
Speaking at the ‘Women in sustainability Africa summit and launch’ in Accra, Ghana, Adebayo urged men to go beyond sentiments and platitudes to recognize and appreciate the important roles women play in society.
Adebayo, who was a guest speaker at the women’s event, disagreed with the notion that certain jobs are not meant for women but for men.
He noted that some of the stereotypes don’t work well, stressing that it is not enough to come out and say that women are the most perfect leaders or that they can’t perform certain job without first giving them the opportunity.
He argued that rather than being sentimental, the women’s ability to perform certain jobs believed to be exclusively for men should be subjected to data analysis.
He stated that once a proper system is put in place, there is no system that women cannot run successfully.
Adebayo said: “Let us use data in dealing with women, not sentiment. We did an experiment in Nigeria when we started putting ministers in places like Petroleum, finance and all those other places where the men used to steal all the money.
“We started putting women there and they performed well but after some time, we stopped loving these women because we started seeing the same problem.
“So, what we came up with is that when dealing with women and when dealing with men, you must set up systems that work.
“There is no system that a woman cannot run successfully and there is no system, if it is not well designed, that a woman cannot falter.
“So, we must go beyond sentiment and platitude; we must give women access to leadership.
“We must put all the safeguards there as well and not say because someone is a woman, she can’t perform certain functions. If a system is not well designed, the person will not be able to function well, man or woman.”
Adebayo lamented that some men are still viewing women from the prism of pre-industrial age when women were asked to sit at home and take care of the domestic fronts while men went out to work in factories.
“The labour laws did not recognize any work done outside the factory as work because they defined labour as how much you pay per hour and nobody will pay for breastfeeding. Nobody will pay you for making the home conducive,” he added.
He noted that the culture of borrowing is posing a serious challenge to Africans. He said: “What I want us to understand is that the language we speak in discussing challenges in Africa are borrowed languages.
“These borrowed languages come with borrowed money, borrowed ideas and if we are not making progress, we need to understand that, maybe, we should reduce borrowing money, and if we cannot reduce borrowing money immediately, we should reduce borrowing ideas, so that we can think originally about our issues.”
Adebayo also called for cooperation, saying, “The issue we have in Africa is cooperation. We need to cooperate as a society because a society that is not doing well overall has poverty, poor infrastructure and has no luxury for gender fight.”
He noted that women are wonderful species of humans and that working with them could be very interesting when you understand their idiosyncrasies.
He said he had the advantage of living with his great grandmother, grandmother and mother when he was growing up and that gave him the opportunity to understand women very well.
“All you need to do to have peace with women is to listen while they speak; don’t talk. And you are good to go,” he said.
Adebayo called for cooperation and support across Africa, saying, “I want the whole of Africa to know that what has started here is going to continue across the continent just like all the ideas of our leaders, like Kwame Nkruma, who started in Ghana but it went round Africa.
“That’s why we had the OAU before it became the AU. So, the spirit which started in Ghana is that in Africa we are one people and the challenges we are facing have confirmed that we are one people and the solution must be based on unity and cooperation.”
He commended the Ghanaian President, John Dramani Mahama, Minister for hosting such an epoch event in his country.
Also present at the event were the Ghanaian Minister for Labour, Abdul-Rashid Pelpuo, and his Women and Children Affairs counterpart among other top government functionaries.
He also commended the labour minister, the organisers of the programme, noting that such programmes would continue across Africa, having realised that the continent has a common problem.
