 Members of the academic community have a unique opportunity to challenge stereotypes, break down barriers and create pathways for women to excel and thrive in the chosen fields. Dean of Lagos Business School Professor Chris Ubeche stated this while delivering his keynote address at an event to mark the year 2024 International Women's Day held at Lagos Business School premises in Ajah Lagos. Our correspondent, Love Ikuku Uyedokun tells us more in this report. Seated are members of the Lagos Business School community with women well represented. They are here to celebrate the achievements of women, past, present and future in commemoration of the 2024 International Women's Day. We've wrapped attention to listen, learn and courage and inspire one another in commemoration of the day, though event kicks off proper with panel of discussants sharing their experiences. I remember once I was interviewing for a role and the hiring manager was a woman. She told me point blank like you want to fight but I'm not going to hire you because you have a child or a young child and you are looking at you I feel like you're going to have more children and that's going to affect the future needs you're going to take. So I'm not going to hire you for this role. For no reason other than the fact that oh you're a woman I'm not going to do it but that didn't stop me and I feel like that's how I've been able to push through this. I have two young girls for instance now and every time I have to look through the sports that they can play. So you see Taekwondo, you see football, you see ballet, you see dance, you see music and all that. Initially when I saw that I would just say Taekwondo is not for girls. No, no, no I'm not even going to consider that. Football definitely not and I have to tell myself oh why this is the bias, this is the promotion, this is the unconscious bias you know and so it's a lot of self-talk. Professor Chris Ogbechi is the Dean of Lagos Business School, LBS. He reaffirms the commitment of the school to build in a workplace culture that celebrates diversity, empowers women, enforces an environment where everyone can reach their full potentials. Angela Wangbugu is the Director of Advisory Services for Africa at Women's World Banking. She's hopeful of positively influencing the Nigerian financial sector to push more women into decision-making roles. We'll be able to influence the sector in general so that we even start having inclusivity when it comes to aspects of women financial inclusion. We believe that when we have more women in decision-making roles then even the policies that they set up in those institutions that they work in will be friendly towards attracting more women and getting more women on board to access the services that they need to be fully empowered and to have prosperity in their lives and impact the community. Plusion is part of our DNA if you like, right? Gender exclusion is hardly experienced in LBS but with specific respects to an initiative that we're currently involved in, there is a co-impact project which is essentially we've defined it as the engendering Nigerian Financial Services Ecosystem project and essentially the intention of that project is to ultimately achieve parity in executive and decision-making roles in Nigerian financial services ecosystem. However, there are calls for women to change the status quo and societal norms that restrict them to setting roles in the workplace so together they can actualize their goals. The event, or themed, inspire inclusion, anticipates. Love Ikuku Uyeduku, Plus TV News. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.