Each year on International Women’s Month, corporate organizations around the world join activists and advocates to contemplate the place of women in contemporary life and what roles everyone must play in ensuring women are more represented in public spaces. It is a time for much celebration and much introspection, and hopefully lasting solutions.
With all the activity around #IWD, it can become easy to lose sight of the real challenge we are trying to shed light on. Are we going to stop advancing conversations around equality for all? This year’s campaign theme for International Women’s Day, #EachForEqual, is the beginning of an ongoing conversation to foster equality. Each organization has to play its part in getting the message out.
For Rubbin’ Minds, #IWD has always been an opportunity to offer their platform to women, amplify their stories and celebrate their successes. This year, the show is taking things a little further by collaborating with a major lifestyle brand to air an explosive month-long series for women who have been front and center in the fight for equality and they are leading by example by ceding the show to a female guest host.
Zimbabwean actress, model and television personality, Vimbai Mutinhiri is a stellar example, highlighting the power of a platform. Ms. Muthinri’s career skyrocketed after she was featured on international reality showcase, Big Brother Africa, and she has leveraged the visibility it gave her to launch an impressive media career, hosting high profile events, interviewing aspirational guests and bringing a spotlight to issues dear to her. For #IWD this year, she joins Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, Rubbin’ Minds resident host to feature and celebrate powerful women who have pushed beyond windy boundaries and rebuilt pyramids from the ashes of the unavoidable. These women educate, motivate, mobilise and inspire a new generation of women to drive new realities for women in Nigeria – Africa too.
But Rubbin’ Minds is not doing this alone. Lipton is actively helping to push the equality narrative and will not be stopping anytime soon.
When most corporate bodies were paying lip service to ‘equality in the workplace place’, Unilever, Lipton’s parent company, was taking measured steps to ensure equal opportunity, treatment, and representation in all its global holdings. And on March 3rd, 2020, exactly a year ahead of its own target of 2021, Unilever announced that it has attained its goal. No wonder the company will partner with Rubbin’ Minds to advance its goal.
With a lineup of formidable women from different walks of life, the special edition of Rubbin’ Minds celebrates history too. Being a home brand for generations, every story of success for these women could have a Lipton backdrop.
The International Women’s Month special has since began airing, beginning with a first episode featuring two powerhouses in their different fields, former World Bank Vice President and onetime presidential candidate, who is the co-convener of the unrelenting #BringBackOurGirls movement, Oby Ezekwesili, and Nollywood maestro Sola Sobawale, who made a power comeback onto the scene with her role in the box office hit – King of Boys – in 2018.
Subsequent episodes will feature business leader’s CEO Medplus, Joke Bakare, MD. Cadbury Oyemika Adeboye, Founder Genevieve Magazine, Betty Irabor, Founder Terra Kulture, Bolanle Austen-Peters, Chairman Access Bank, Dr. Ajoritsedere Awosika, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa among others.
New episodes air every Sunday at 3pm. Be sure to tune in to catch some of the most inspiring stories of Generation Equality.
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