Photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

Saratu Abubakar, Staff Reporter

It is yet another International Women’s Day and from that of last year to today, more women have been empowered, a lot of glass ceilings have been shattered all over the world. With women winning in various aspects of life. If there is anything I learnt from the women studies classes I took it is that it is important to be empowered as a human.

Empowerment makes your life easy, it opens up options and allows you to be whoever you want to be, wherever you want and however.

However, the question is: does empowerment have the same meaning for all the women in the world? If my definition varies from the other woman does that make me less of a woman or more of a woman than the other person?

According to the dictionary, empowerment is the act of being strong, confident and being able to control one’s life and claim one’s rights.

Over the last few years, feminism has made an impact around the world. Status of women is changing, it is no longer just a man’s world, but ideas that acknowledge being a woman is as enough as being a man are pushed out daily and the world is listening. One of the core values of feminism is to be empowered, to be able to stand on your own and be your own person.

According to a young woman, to be empowered is to be able to make your own decisions.

“I believe it is to be able to choose what you want,” she added.

As mentioned earlier, women are breaking the glass ceiling in different fields and that is a form of empowerment, but what about the woman who chooses to stay home and be a housewife? Should she not be part of the category of empowered women if that is the life she chose?

As long as it is her choice, the woman staying at home is no less than the woman going to work. Having a choice is the yardstick here and it is all that matters.

Through the experience of being a housewife for over ten years, a woman spoke on how people have little regard for women who stay at home, forgetting that it is also a tasking job.

“If I could turn back the hands of time I will get a job not because I want to but because the society doesn’t respect you for being a housewife.”

This shows that in a bid to empower people we are forcing them on a pedestal. While some women are out making choices and cannot imagine a life without them making their own choice, others are forced to make choices because the society says they are not enough if they are not like others.

From my experience in life, we often understand choices through coloured glasses. For you as a woman that comes from an orientation of ambitious people, it might be hard to comprehend why another woman might choose not to build a career.

Due to one reason or the other, we have made life to be like a rat race. Everyone seems to be chasing something and some people believe what they get on that chase makes them better than the next person. We completely forget that we don’t always want the same thing even if we happen to be on the same path.

To be woman enough is to be able to make your own choice.

It is also to respect the choices other women make, irrespective of what you think their choice should be.

As you celebrate International Women’s Day, remove your coloured glasses, accommodate women that do not have the same ideologies with you and respect their choices.