In celebrating this year International Women’s day, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has called for gender equality and women empowerment. Speaking at the fourth edition of NSE International Women’s day symposium themed “Press For Progress, the chief executive officer of NSE, Oscar Onyema said that the theme of the symposium is not just another theme for another edition of the International women’s day, saying it is a call to action to spur women and men into taking bold steps towards closing the gender gap.

Onyema said: “It is saddening to note that with over 100 years of devoting a day, to celebrating the achievements of women and discussing steps towards achieving gender parity and social justice for women, the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its 2017 Gender Gap report averred that our dream of achieving parity across gender required more than 200 years to become a reality.”

He added that “as one of Africa’s foremost securities exchanges and member of the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative (SSEI), we are deeply committed to leveraging our position to accelerate the achievement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number five which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030.”

According to Onyema, the Exchange took steps to address the lack of female representation on our National Council  by electing three eminent female members at the last AGM. Today, we have 23 per cent female representation as against zero percent representation in 2016.

“Last year, we initiated the NSE GEM (Gender Empowerment Men), a group of male employees at the NSE who act as mentors to young female employees, helping them to navigate the workplace and grow their career. “Under the four pillars of our CSR program namely: Workplace, Marketplace, Community and Environment, we continue to seek ways to celebrate women and play our part in closing the gender gap.”