We are one half of this planet and yet women all over the world are second class citizens. There are many women abused in so many countries. To be a woman today is quite a place to sit.

In so many places in the world, there is an assumption that African women are the most oppressed. It is not true, we are not! At least not all.

The majority of African women are still denied education and employment, and have limited opportunities in trade, industry and government.

To date the women of Africa, like women elsewhere, have not been included as full, equal and effective stakeholders in processes that determine their lives. Their role and contribution to national and continental development processes are neither recognised nor rewarded; they continue to be absent from decision making and although they bear the brunt of conflicts, women are generally not included in peace negotiations or other initiatives.

So I think what African women as a group represent is an example a symbol of Africa’s vulnerability sixty years after independence. There’s violence against women as an offshoot of the general violence in the society.

I survived as a woman where men dominated because my people were supportive of women. In so many places in the world, there is an assumption that African women are the most oppressed. It is not true, we are not! At least not all. As an Akan, Fante woman, I grew up in a society where there was not much discrimination against girls. That is why I could be a writer and nobody could tell me writing was a man’s job. I had to go to University to be told by someone that I speak and do other things like a man. My regret is that we Ghanaian girls are not using the freedom we have inherited, and men are now moving in to colonise us.

I believe African women are burdened by the weight of patriarchy, misinterpretation of religious tenets and a culture that has refused to grow beyond the Stone Age.

American women, like so many others around the world, were trained largely to live as second-class citizens, and living as a second-class citizen meant living as a victim. It was only by empowering them with full social and economic equality that average mothers, wives, and daughters of the world stood a chance of providing for themselves and the offspring they bore.

I was targeted and abused for being an Igbo woman who came to give jobs to and elevate my people while sidelining them.

Harassment is normal in Nigeria, or from Africans, most of them are not being taught to respect women.

Women are forgotten individuals with disproportionate level of income due to poverty and deprivation.

Without land control, women are second-class citizens. They also deny the right to work as farmers, because it is unthinkable to be a farmer without access to land.

Women have always been an exclusive part of the African civilisations, representing themselves and the larger society in moderate percentage, making great economic strides that helped solidify their place in the society, taking a very important position in their societies to the extent that they are indispensable, etc.

Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century. These are issues of right and wrong -- in any culture. But they’re also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.