The Voices4Change (V4C), an International (NGO) says gender equity and non-violence can bring important benefits to both men and women.
Mrs Patience Ekeoba, Research and Evidence Lead for Voice4Change, spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday on the sidelines of a workshop on “Evidence Mining’’.
According to her, gender equity will foster better relationships, less stress in homes as well as ensure happier children.
“It will also build up future generations who reject violence against women and children as an inevitable part of life,’’ Ekeoba said.
She said that V4C programmes helped to meet the need for gender equity by providing research and evidence to foster public debate, attitudes and behaviours towards masculinity, femininity and gender equality in Nigeria.
“When we started the research, we knew it was a new area because we had done our scoping and we knew that masculinity did not really feature in the gender discourse.
“We wanted to introduce something different. Since the different report was produced, we have had amazing responses, and the reception of the report had been fantastic.
“Even the follow up had showed that people are using the report. One of the concerns we had was that research work gets published and ends up on the shelves.
“However, other stand-alone reports show that people use research and that is what gladdens our hearts and we felt we could push this further,’’ she said.
Ekeoba said that the mining workshop was organised to bring people together to scrutinise the report and see what they could make of it.
She said that people were drawn from the government, media, religious leaders, traditional rulers, civil society organisations, the youth and the academia to dig out statistics, images, quotes and inspirations to be used by the larger society.
She commended participants at the workshop for being able to dig out statistics, images, quotes and inspirations in their report.
“We are happy because we are creating a culture that will support the use of evidence.
“We are happy that some of the things we have produced are not things that can be used by a few people, but by the larger community.
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