• Friday, March 29, 2024
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FMN deepens women participation in workplace with ‘The Amazons’

FMN

Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN) has intensified efforts to build a gender-balanced world by introducing the FMN Women’s Network known as ‘The Amazons’ at its commemoration of International Women’s Day at the weekend.

The theme of the event, ‘Balance for Better’, is underpinned by the idea that balance drives a better working world.

In 2017, FMN for the first time welcomed a woman, Salamatu Suleman, on its board of directors after several years of having a male-dominated board.

“In the last couple of years or so, we have also started to see an improvement in the ratio of women participation across the board within the technical teams in the mills and in senior management positions,” said John Coumantaros, chairman, FMN.
“To ensure that we keep up with the momentum, I am proud to announce that we are officially unveiling the FMN Women’s Network, aptly named ‘The Amazons’,” Coumantaros said.

The initiative spearheaded by Salamatu has been carefully designed to identify and groom the next generation of women leaders in FMN. The mentorship programme will run the arm of women with the necessary tutelage and inspiration to rise to better opportunities, break the glass ceilings and take on the world.

“On December 17, 2018 was born the ‘FMN Mentoring Amazons’ programme whereby Salamatu engages with the pioneer ‘Amazons’ periodically,” Paul Gbededo, GMD, FMN, said at the event.

Gbededo further said the pioneer mentees would in turn serve as mentors to the other females in the FMN Group.
Also at the event, several talks, discussions and solutions were proffered to women on how to have and manage better access to opportunities to improve themselves in the society.

“Well, I would say that it is very important for women to understand that we live in a society where culture, religion and so many things guide the environment that we are in. We just need to study our environment, the personalities that we are working with, how to manage them effectively, increase our knowledge in emotional intelligence and in communication,” Hansatu Adegbite, executive director, Women in Management and Business (Wimbiz), said.

Several researches have shown that women are the fundamental human reservoir of every society as they control most of the non-monetary economy (subsistence agriculture, bearing children, domestic labour, etc.) and play an important role in the monetary economy as well (training, wage, labour and employment).

Marie Owoniyi, HR consultant, said there are different degrees of opportunities for women and there is nothing like too much.
“Women are smart enough to ensure that they appropriately use whatever level of opportunities that they have. So, very smart organisations or groups of people should help women to unleash whatever potential they have so that they achieve amazing results,” Owoniyi said.

According to the recent Global Gender Gap Index that measures countries’ progress towards gender parity across four thematic dimension (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment), Nigeria ranked 133 out of 149 countries, scoring 0.621 point in 2018.

“There are a lot of women that have given up opportunities because of the challenges that they face either from work or home especially at the early,” Aruleba Arinola, head of finance, sugar value chain, FMN, said.

“That is why for us to overcome this, you need an employer that will work with you constructively and to put in place the right arrangements which take into account needs of the businesses as well as the non-work aspect,” Arinola said.

FMN is a Nigerian agribusiness company founded in 1960 by George S. Coumantaros as a private limited company and in 1978 became a public company, with its shares listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.