OUR CULTURE, IS IT THE BEST?

Every community, organization, association, ethnic group, and country has a culture that guides their daily activities, belief, and expectations. The culture, set by people explains the reasons “why they act the way they do”. The totality of culture is embedded in the norms, values, and taboos.

Our culture, is it the best? This is a question I keep asking myself and others around me as well. Is our culture a blessing or a curse? Is it our limitation or liberation? Is it our downfall or uprise? Well, I would not give an answer to that, but I expect you think about those questions deeply.

However, I believe culture, which is our way of life, should be flexible, and dynamic. Holding on to the culture of 400 years ago will not align to the modernization, industrialization, and globalization of this modern day. We need to understand that the culture of 400 years ago was set according to their lifestyle and level of exposure.

Thanks to the era of technology, industrialization, and globalization, we have become more exposed; many things we once thought was rocket science or taboo now have a simple scientific and logical explanation. How is it then that we, who are exposed still chose to hold on to the culture of 400 years ago which was influenced by their level of exposure. If our way of life has changed, our culture which is defined as the totality of our way of life is expected to be influenced as well.

We can’t keep saying “that’s the culture; it’s the culture of our forefathers” because we are not living the life of our forefathers anymore. We now have technology and modernization which has transformed our generation totally from the days of our forefathers. Hence, a new lifestyle is born.

We can’t have human development if this over 400 year’s culture is still set as standard to govern our action. There is a need for adjustment of culture, as we become more exposed to modernization and globalization.

Please don’t get me wrong about culture; culture announces the uniqueness of a group or community. It is a beautiful thing to uphold the cultural heritage of a community, ethnic group or country. Culture gives more splendours to the world; seeing a different group of people doing different things to achieve the same result shows the beauty of creativity. It is good we have a common goal set by our culture, however, we need to reflect on the impact of culture; the positive impact and the negative impact.

Holding on tightly to culture has made many people stereotype, and has inhibited human growth in some aspect. It is not about “this is how it has always been done”, it is about “this is what is needed and needs to be done”.  Culture does not make us, we make culture; it’s time to put an end to every culture that’s inhibiting our growth, liberation, and success as an individual, community or nation.

The Substantial development goals (SDGs) are definitely going to change some existing culture because SDGs is concerned about the general development and growth of people, therefore any culture that contributes to the growth of people, will be sustained and others will be changed this is because the growth of people has become a yardstick to measure our culture.

The strength of every community is the human resources they possess. The question is “how do we channel our human resources to exhibit our strength and make us gain substantial growth”? Therefore, there is a need for us to focus on human capacity development.

In focusing on human capacity development, sadly, a set of people have been left in the backyard, rooted in the kitchen, and programmed to be hidden/silent in the community. Their resources have not been tapped; as they are very instrumental in the growth of the community.

These sets of people are the women/girls. The women/girls talent, skills, gift, intelligence, leadership, ideas which are of great advantage to the community have not been effectively used, as they remained untapped. It’s time we tap into our women resources, explore their wonderful talents and ideas to build our community/nation.

The women untapped resources are as a result of some cultures inhibiting the development and growth of women. It is high time we say NO to every culture inhibiting the development of women, and drawing our community backward. It no more news that women who were given the opportunity to showcase their God-given talents have recorded great success and impact in various fields such as science, social science, law, politics, administration and so on, and as a result has led to the growth of the community as well.

We want more growth in our community; therefore we are determined to use all our human resources (man and woman without exceptions) effectively so that we can have a sustainable growth.

One of SDGs goal, which is gender equality, is aimed at developing our women’s image which has been left at the rear and, equates with the men’s image that has been developed, in order to have an overall growth in the nation.

Therefore, to achieve overall growth, it is high time we end every culture inhibiting women development:

The culture of “women must stay in the kitchen” must end:

Women are multitalented, they can multitask. Why should we allow a culture of women must stay in the kitchen, to kill the other numerous talents our women possess? Shouldn’t we be eager to see our women and girl child performing wonders with their talent in politics, leadership-decision, science, administration, social inclusion and growth? Women should be given the opportunity to showcase their talent. After all, its God-given talent and it should be welcomed, embraced and channeled towards our national growth.

The culture of “women must stay silence” must end:

Even from nature, it has been proven that women talk more than men, so it is ironical to keep them silent. It's time we help to channel our women/girl child’s ‘ability to talk and eloquently express her deep imaginations’ towards the economic growth. They should be heard as an inspiration to others. As the women nature of talking and expressing herself can’t be taken away from her regardless of the culture of silence, it has been wrongly channeled. As a result, people say women gossip a lot. Why won’t they? The culture of ‘women must stay silence’ gave them no opportunity to channel their energy to economic growth. Common, it's time we help them to rechanneled that talent. We need such talent in many sectors; in research and development (R&D), consultancy, public speaking, marketing, etc. to contribute to the economy of the nation.

The culture of “women must not lead” must end:

Who says a woman can’t lead? What are the qualities of a leader? Of course, you will admit that our women have the quality to be a good leader as this has been expressed in their ability to manage the home. It’s time they get involved in the decision- making of the nation. It’s time they manage the nation. It’s time our women occupy a leadership position in the community. Women are efficient in managing resources; therefore we so much need them to effectively manage the nation’s resource, so that we can have economic growth. Men and women should be given equal opportunity to freely express their God-given talent to rule the world. Men and women should be actively involved in the decision-making of the nation. However, we have few women who are involved in the decision-making of the nation. This is an awakening call for more women to get actively involved in nation-building.

The culture of “women must not be trained” must end:

The girl child is as talented as the boy child. God didn’t make any discrimination about that. He gave us, everyone at least a talent. However, we all need polishing of our talent to become evident and worthy of praise. Our talent is like gold in its original state. And as the gold needs to be refined for us to appreciate its beauty, our talent needs to be refined as well. That’s why as we take the male child to school to polish his talent, we must take the female child to school as well to polish her talent because we need both resources (talents/skills) from male and female to maximize our human resources and use it to improve the economy, build the nation and achieve a common global future. We need our women to be given training. It is often said, “if you train a girl child, you train the world”. The women need training, they need to go to school, attend empowerment forum, seminars, workshops etc. so that they can effectively maximize every opportunity. Without the women talent being polished, she will often be undervalued compared to the man’s talent that has been polished.

In conclusion, today, we crave for gender equality because both our men and women are important to us; they are our human resources and are very crucial to the fundamental growth of any community. They are part of us that makes us (who we are), therefore there is a need for everyone to get involved in the growth of the nation and the sustainability of the world.

I, Ayobami, say YES to Gender Equality Movement (YGEM). Join the movement (YGEM) to sensitize people about gender equality, the importance and how we will all benefit from it.

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