“Home is where one starts from”- T.S. Eliot
The rainy season in Ibadan, the leafy town I grew up in, is a sight to behold. On a seemingly sunny day from out of nowhere a torrential shower can overwhelm you. I vividly recall coming home from my first day of secondary school aged 11 after such a downpour. Drenched, tired and hungry, I came home to find my mother who had taken a week off from her banking job to help me settle. I met her seated at the dining room table looking through memorabilia. Joining her, she smiles and hands me what looked like scrap paper. Looking more closely, I realized it was a cutting of a British newspaper article from the 1950s with the caption “Two Nigerian girls have met in Oldham where they are both training to be nurses at the Royal Infirmary”. With surprise, I realized a lady in the picture was my grandmother, beaming with pride in her nurse’s uniform. This was a formative moment in my life.
Another clear childhood memory was visiting my paternal grandmother at her nylon factory where she regaled me with stories of her experiences as a teacher while helping her husband build his business as one of the largest distributors of Nissan cars in Nigeria. I wondered: “How did Grandma Onireke have the energy to do this and raise her nine children as well as several adopted ones?”
Women have always been pillars of the home and society. There is no tool for development more effective than education of girls and empowerment of women. Alas, the steady gains women have made over the years in the strive for reducing gender inequality is being eroded in just a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to new data released in the month of January 2021, employers in the US cut 140,000 jobs in December 2020, with women accounting for all the job losses. Many of the industries affected the most by the pandemic were food service, retail and entertainment, which has an overrepresentation of women. As schools and daycare centres closed, many women have been forced to make hard choices between work and parenting. To say the least, unpaid care and the domestic work burden have increased manifold for most.
If we are honest with ourselves, juggling personal and professional responsibilities as a care giver has never been a walk in the park. In the midst of a pandemic makes it even a more herculean task. Let’s not even go there with online schooling.
So how are you faring as a career woman in these trying times? The first month of this year is almost over. If you are one to set milestones, how close or how far away are you in achieving these milestones?
Here are some tips to help in the actualization of those goals.
- Write down clearly defined goals and invest in yourself
It’s important to articulate the incremental steps you plan to take in actualizing those goals. Attend more seminars and personal development workshops. The prevalence of webinars given the pandemic makes it more cost effective.
- Have a well-planned schedule
It helps to be organized.
- Me time is key! Prioritize your mental and physical wellbeing
If you are looking to enjoy good health alongside your career; you also need to work on maintaining your own wellbeing.
- Leverage on your support system
Don’t be deceived into thinking you can be superwoman. Ask for help and leverage on your support system to help with the children, household, transport, you name it. Our mothers and grandmothers did so.
- Don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay not to be okay.
Above all, be kind to yourself and don’t make unhealthy comparisons. There are times when the kids had cereal for dinner simply because I couldn’t muster the strength to make a proper meal. Guess what? The heavens didn’t come falling as a result.
Be kind to one another.
Yours sincerely,