Today is International Women’s Day and this years’ theme is “Invest in women: Accelerate progress” with a focus on addressing economic disempowerment while the campaign theme is “Inspire inclusion”. Reflecting on this year’s themes had me thinking about what inclusion means for me as a woman and how women can invest with and in other women and also inspire inclusion.
I am the first child of my parents and I often wanted to have older siblings, a sister and a brother. Maybe, because growing up I wanted people that I could relate with and who could help guide me and also because I noticed that my friends who had older siblings were often more exposed and visiting their houses during the holidays was so much fun because one met with different kinds of people and their houses always seemed to bubble differently as children of all ages went to and fro. Also, but not necessarily true, I often felt life would just be more sweeter and softer had I an older sibling.
As I grew up and went through the educational system without a hitch, I found myself the youngest amongst my classmates. Most of them are at least two years older than me and I must say that I learnt quite a lot from my interactions with them. However, looking back at my younger days, I regret not being close to women who were much older than me socially and in the work space. There is something about having an older person of the same sex (with the purest of intentions) guide you through life. A close and intentional walk with them will expose one to how to live and deal with life. I have friends who because of their exposure and relationships with older women especially before they got married or in their first five years of marriage, were able to learn how to manage and invest their monies better as they opened up opportunities that came across their way to their “Aburos” ( younger sisters) by way of investment clubs and cooperatives and also opened their minds to an awareness of their person, skills and talents and the ability to navigate life successfully without thinking they don’t have what it takes or deserve to. Their matured perspective to life and marriage helped my friends make less mistakes than I did.
The theme for this year’s celebration calls for society and the world at large to invest in women and inspire their inclusion especially economically and I totally agree with that clarion call. However, I would like to draw the attention of women themselves to invest in themselves and secure inclusion for every woman in their circles regardless of their ages and where they are in life.
Women together can really be powerful. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask for each other for help, as one woman’s success is not another woman’s failure- Alla.
Sometime in 2019, myself and two of my friends decided to start an investment club. We had been doing the regular Ajo (monthly contributions) for years and apart from using the money for specific projects it wasn’t an investment tool. We decided to invite friends (most of us invited old secondary school classmates and younger women we were mentoring) to join us, floated and registered a company, opened a bank account and started contributing towards our capital. The goal then was to buy property outside the country which we would hold for some years and then sell. We gave ourselves a five year tenure and the contributions were fixed at N50,000.00 per month, which we exchanged to dollars periodically and kept in a dollar mutual savings account until we had enough for our goal. Needless to say, we are in the fifth year, have invested in a woman-owned hedge fund, an international hedge fund, managed to raise money to buy a house in the United States of America, the deal fell through but luckily we got our money back and in total we’ve raised about $150,000.00 capital apart from profit. It’s an all women’s club and I know of many clubs like ours that are doing well and show the power available to women if and when they come together.
Studies show that women are increasingly investing more than men because they are getting better educated and they are starting earlier. They are also said to be outperforming men in investments because they are more conservative in their investments, take less risks, do not jump on everything that comes their way, preferring to safeguard their monies rather than lose them, are less impulsive and would rather wait out market volatility than panic and sell. The same studies also show that we are less knowledgeable when it comes to investment opportunities, less confident of our investment abilities and have less in our investment accounts than men most likely due to our low income compared with that of men.
Investing in ourselves as women has been a joy as we have been able to do so much together without any rancor whatsoever in our dealings with one another. It has helped us secure a bit of our future, opened up our eyes to opportunities around us and helped us build a sisterhood worth celebrating. I highly recommend that as women we find like-minded people to work with in building our own wealth empires and we will find inclusion coming automatically.
Investing in women could also mean investing in relationships and I am big on that also. A sisterhood will take us very far if we commit to it and be willing to give and take. It’s time to lay down the idea of women groups being cults or peopled by little, envious, bitter women and start to see ourselves as sisters together on a journey.
May I ask that in the sisterhoods that we form that we invite women of all ages, cadre, class and from all walks of life. May I ask that we invite especially the older women and I mean women in their late 60s or early 70s who have a lot to share from their life’s experiences but who sadly are sidelined because they are no longer visible in terms of work, profession or even socially. I have had the privilege of being at the sidelines of their circles and I must say that they are a grove of treasure and information, but we are not getting what they have to offer because we either think they are not current with the times forgetting that there is nothing new under the sun, thinking they may tend to be overbearing and will want to take over.
May I ask that this International Women’s Day we women continue to support ourselves in the knowledge that what happens to one of us affects us all.
Wear your purple with pride!!! Happy International Women’s Day.