Empowering woman through Education

The Better Life for Rural Women (BLRW) programme is an innovative new dimension to efforts at injecting appropriate instruments for empowering women in Nigeria. The programme, founded by then First Lady Maryam Babangida in 1987, was designed to empower Nigerian women and enhance their social, economic and political status. The idea was borne out of the abysmal neglect and disregard of the role and status of women in society. Women and their female children were the drawers of water and hewers of wood. They were the custodians of non-income generating economic and social activities such as cooking and childbearing. It is anachronistic that males dominate the cultivation of cash crops meant for international markets and confine women to the growing of only food crops that receive little or no returns. Their constituency was then in the kitchen and the ""baby-making factory"" . The World Bank, in recent development intervention programmes worldwide, deviates from this stance and focuses on gender sensitive projects that enhance gender access to production resources and Income yielding activities.