 talking about gender equality, 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 their chosen fields. Now Dean of Lagos Business School, Professor Chris Ogreche, stated this while delivering his keynote address at an event to mark this year's 2024 International Women's Day held at the LBES premises in Ajah area of Lagos. The school also announced a core impact project designed to address gender inequality, especially in the decision making roles in the sector. Details in this report. Seated at this whole are members of the Lagos Business School community with women well represented. They are here to celebrate the achievement of women past, present and future in commemoration of the 2024 International Women's Day. With raptor tension, they listened, learned, encouraged and inspired one another in commemoration of the day. The event kicks off proper with the panel of discussants sharing their experiences. 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. Jerry, when I first started teaching at the Business School, I was coming and they wouldn't pay the least attention to me because they didn't believe that this young lady in front was the one that was going to teach them. But they didn't shake me because they realized that they didn't want to listen to me on account of maybe my name or maybe because I was female. Professor Chris Ogbecher is the Dean of the Lagos Business School. He reaffirmed the commitment of the LBS to build in a workplace culture that celebrates diversity, empowers women and foster an environment where everyone can reach their full potential. So by tackling inclusion and embracing our colleagues' diversity, perspectives and experiences, we pave the way for a more equitable and prosperous future for all. Let us continue to inspire Jerry and make a lasting impact on women's lives everywhere, not just in every year. Angela Wambogo is the Director of Advisory Services for Africa at Women's World Banking. She is 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 than 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. Yetunde Anibaba is a management educator and organizational development professional. On the sidelines of the event, she speaks to newsmen about the essence of the Lagos business school's core impact projects. Inclusion is part of our DNA, if you like, right? Gender exclusion is hardly experienced in LDS. But with specific respects to an initiative that we're currently involved in, there is a core 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 where there is a considerable, if you like, the participation and the representation of women at the executive and decision-making roles is considerably skewed. In other words, we have very few women at those roles even though they come in, you know, at the junior level and they're usually more than the men sometimes. But as they rise through the ranks, we find out that they just disappear. However, there are calls for women to challenge the status quo and societal norms that restrict them to certain roles in the workplace. So together, they can actualize their goals. The event is themed, inspire inclusion, hashtag anticipate. 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.