Bamidele Eleniola and Femi Otitoju
A United States of America’s university teacher, Professor Chinyere Okafor and the Federal University Oye Ekiti (FUOYE’s) Professor of Food Science and Biotechnology, Sylvia Uzochukwu, who doubles as FUOYE’s Director of Gender Studies, including other speakers who converge on Oye campus have canvassed gender inclusiveness in the FUOYE’s curriculum.
FUOYE DVC ( Admin) Professor Tajudeen Bolanle Opoola represented the Vice Chancellor, Professor Abayomi Sunday Fasina at the workshop
This call was made at the 2nd Carnegie African Diaspora Workshop, themed “Inculcating Women and Gender in My Course,” held at the Faculty of Science Hall on Oye campus of FUOYE.
In her keynote address, Professor Chinyere Okafor emphasized importance of the workshop, saying it’s about raising awareness on women and gender and their impact on studies, life and personal relationships.
Guest Speaker: Professor Chinyere Okafor
Professor Okafor, who particularly x-rayed various definitions to describe gender, mooted suggestions why the name of the Gender Center at FUOYE be changed to “Center for Women and Gender” in order to make it reflect the Nigerian way of life including its inclusiveness.
Besides, Professor Okafor, who lectures at Wichita University, Kansas, USA, emphasized the need to embrace historical treatment of gender with a view to addressing current challenges of underrepresentation of women in leadership roles.
She, however, urged lecturers to incorporate gender perspectives into their courses especially various fields where women were underrepresented- fields like engineering and the rest.
To FUOYE’s Director of Gender Studies, Professor Sylvia Uzochukwu, incorporating gender perspectives into lectures for curriculum development at FUOYE had become inevitable, saying the essence of the workshop was to ignite awareness about reasons why it’s time the university embraced gender in its curriculum.
Director of Gender Studies, Professor Sylvia Uzochukwu
She said: “This workshop is to create awareness in the university community as you know that it’s the responsibility of Gender Studies to enlighten us.
“I welcome distinguished Professors and every other person present at the august event.”
Earlier, while declaring open the workshop, The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Abayomi Sunday Fasina, represented by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Administration, Professor Tajudeen Bolanle Opoola, expressed gratitude to the keynote speaker while he called for active participation in the workshop.
Professor Fasina described the Guest Speaker, Professor Chinyere Okafor as calm and full of humility, describing her presence in the university as an added value to academics.
Also speaking at the event, the first FUOYE inaugural lecturer, Professor Cecilia Akintayo said as a Professor of Industrial Chemistry, there was this notion of when growing up that only males were capable of studying sciences and whenever a female chose science courses people asked why were you here? Will you be able to cope?
Professor Cecilia Akintayo
“Even in Engineering courses, people will be asking if the female student will be able to cope with the programmes. But this, she said had changed as this was why FUOYE must introduce Gender in the curriculum.
“We have to introduce gender into research in FUOYE,” she said.
Professor Akintayo was echoed by the Director of General Studies, Professor Ntoimo, who simply said “in my experience in gender, gender issues were introduced to me, and one of the empirical evidence has affirmed that one of the biggest problems of the world is the issues of gender which cannot be overflogged in our society.”
She went on: “Incorporating it into our curriculum is very important whether we are in the core sciences, social sciences, Arts, or humanity, incorporating an aspect of gender is something that we must do.
“Directorate of General Studies has agreed to incorporate gender into one of their courses, and one of the few things that gender does is to incorporate it into research.
Director of General Studies, Professor Lorretta Ntoimo
“So it is high time we introduced gender into research in FUOYE because our institution is positioning to win many grants.”
Also, Dean of Communication and Media Studies, Professor Chika Asogwa said that religion had contributed immensely to women’s awareness in the society.
According to Professor Chika Asogwa, religion had a great impact on segregation of women as she had consistently argued that this frequently occurred because of a portion of the Bible that says “men love your wife and the wife should be submissive to their husband.”
Dean, Communication and Media Studies, Professor Chika Asogwa
But my question had always been “why is it men cannot love their wives back; why must it be submission?”
Meanwhile, Deputy Registrar, Distance Learning in the university, Mr. Oloruntele Raphael Olarewaju said that the trend that we needed to look at now was “what a man can do, a woman can do better” as the “Bible says women are weaker vessels and as such they should be taken care of.”
Deputy Registrar, Mr. Oloruntele Raphael Olarewaju
He went on to say that men should also agree that things were changing should the last convocation was anything to go by “as we will realize that most of the students who graduated with first class are women. Men don’t read again and some are not ready to go school.”
Meanwhile, in her appreciation message, The Deputy Director, Center for Energy Research , Dr. Modinat Adekoya thanked the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Abayomi Sunday Fasina for given the Directorate opportunity to organize this programme.
Dr. Modinat Adekoya
She said: “I want to appreciate the representative of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tajudeen Bolanle Opoola for his support at all-time including the resource person, Professor Chinyere Okafor for her well-structured, insightful and thought-provoking lecture delivered at the workshop.
participants
“My appreciation also goes to all of you that participated in this workshop. Thank you for coming.”
Photo Credit: Toluwanimi Bamigbola
