A New Nigeria that Provides Sustainable Infrastructure to Support Her Dreams is POssible!
A Nation's infrastructure provides the basic scaffolding for development. Women and girls constitute half of the half the population for whom public infrastructural amenities are set up and must be considered as the primary clients that they are.
Women and girls are at risk not only from poor health infrastructure, but from inadequate infrastructure across all sectors, which can limit access to essential services and prevent them from maintaining security and self-sufficiency during social and economic upheaval.
Gender is an important but largely neglected aspect of infrastructure planning and provision.
Underdeveloped and gender-blind infrastructure is one of the leading causes for the inability of women and girls to access the basic services to support their upward social mobility and reduce the gender gap.
Gender-blind infrastructure fails to consider the different roles, responsibilities and particular needs of women, men, girls and boys in a specific context and how this affects their ability to use or access infrastructure.
Considering the long operational life of infrastructure, not mainstreaming gender in the infrastructure life cycle can reinforce gender inequalities for decades, wasting limited financial resources and putting lives at risk.
It is a moral and financial imperative to ensure that this massive investment includes a gender mainstreaming approach to infrastructure planning, delivery and management to achieve sustainability, equality, and economic and social benefits for all.
There is a lot to be gained by ensuring equal access to infrastructure services for women and girls. Not only will it improve and protect the lives and livelihoods of women and girls, but will benefit the entire economy as well.