Nigeria with around 140 million citizens and a huge population of women has the potential to transmute from a poverty stricken nation to a vibrant economy through adequate empowerment of women. Women in Nigeria are crucial beyond certain customary duties and procreation efforts. They have the potential to turn an ailing economy around, at the family level through their in-bred economic strength, organisational skills and single-minded focus to surmount obstacles posed by culture, their environment and the male folks.
Notably, the task of women empowerment for national growth and productivity is daunting and it requires the efforts of all stakeholders especially the private sector
Rights of women around the world are important indicators of the well being of a society. Despite ratifications of treaties and conventions on women's rights by many nations, empowering women is still hampered by cultural, political and economic barriers.
Women often work more than men, yet they are paid less; gender discrimination affects women throughout life time.
In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, "No one in the world can make anyone low in esteem without the person agreeing to it". Thus, women should sit up, take their rights and protect it without allowing their male counterpart to make them feel inferior.
Significantly, there is a great need for a girl-child to be educated and stereotype roles for male and female should be highly discouraged.

The projection of women as second fiddle in the society is a major problem which this work attempts to unravel.
The media is vital in attitude formation and deciding what issues the public accept as topical. Media commentary shapes ideology, public opinion and social values. However, the image of women created by the media is that of a light-hearted often frivolous lot.
Women are majorly covered by the media not on the basis of their achievements but rather what happens to them when they are victims.
There looms large negative publicity of women by the media with respect to issues bordering on rape, divorce, nudity, adultery, among a host of others. Whereas, less reportage is given to achievements of exceptional women who have achieved great feat in various sects of human endeavours or who are trying to do something novel in areas of politics, education, invention, economy or even leadership.
Language has a large vocabulary and repository of images that delineate partial destruction and annihilaration. Many attitudes towards women are inherited and given utterance in the mainstream of speech and writing.
Significantly, these languages designates women as less than whole, less than total, less than complete. Women becomes less than human, less than capable, less than male, less than reasonable, less than a citizen.

Women and Politics
Andersen, (1997:290) advocated that one way to change women's standing before the law is to increase the number of women who are law makers. Thus, one of the major feminist political strategies in recent years has been to expand the number of women serving in public political office.
In the past women were explicitly barred from political offices and political rights were based on birth, property, age, income and not extended to women.
The concept of patriarchy was expounded by Walby, (1990:20) as a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women. It is also seen as a concept that operates throughout the society including production.
Jibrin, (2004:3) is of the position that the marginalisation of women in Nigeria's patriarchal political system is not a new phenomenon. He said that this dates back to the colonial era.
Indeed, women were not even allowed to vote in Northern Nigeria until 1976 and this continued into the fourth republic. For instance, out of the 11, 881 electable positions available during the 1999 elections, only 631 women contested and those who managed to win were a mere 1.62 percentage.
Modes of Marginalisation
Women have been marginalised in various ways with diverse instrumentality of marginalisation. Jibrin, (2004:7) states ways in which women are being marginalised, especially with respect to politics.
a) Labelling as strategy of exclusion: subverting the affirmative action policy
In general, party officials refused to take the candidature of female aspirants seriously. Party executives in most constituencies set out to label women as aspirants with less than the required commitment to the party.
Party barons at the local level repeatedly argued that by convincing the national executives to remove nomination fees for them, women have demonstrated a lack of commitment to the development of the party. This argument was used to make declarations that male candidates are more committed to the party because they make their financial contributions willingly and that commitment should be recognized and rewarded. Such officials therefore succeeded in labelling women aspirants as "anti-party" people and thereby created the basis for their exclusion.
Once a negative label has been successfully imposed on an aspirant, it is easy to exclude the labelled person irrespective of the formal rules and procedures established, because the person's legitimacy has been eroded.
b) Zoning is another technique, which is usually used by party officials. Zoning and other forms of administrative flat are used to exclude female aspirants by simply making the party zone out the seat in question to an area where the aspirant being excluded is not an indigene.
c) Violence and the use of thugs are often used by candidates opposing female candidates, knowing that female aspirants would normally give up rather than succumb to the use of thuggery.

Women and the Economy
Women in the Media
Andersen, (2005:54) advertisements are only one source for the ideas generated about women in the mass media. Popular music, advice columns, Television shows and other cultural materials all carry explicit and implicit suggestions regarding the appropriate social roles for women and men.
In newspapers, magazines or Television, women tend to be over represented as clerical worker and sex objects while men appear as managers, expert and repair technicians.
Andersen posited that women are usually shown in passive or solitary activity or as trying to get the attention of men. Advertisement not only sell the products will use, but also convey images of how we are to define our selves, relationships and needs. He said, if men were shown in the advertisement as women routinely are, people would probably find it laughable but how often are women displayed in advertisement putting on their underwear's or lying on beds?
The demeanor of women in advertising in the background, on the ground or looking dreamily into space makes them appear subordinate and available to men.
The ideals of our women and men that this cultural object portrays greatly influence our thinking about gender in the society. They convey an impression about the proper roles of women and men, their sexual and gender identities and their self concepts.
Deutscher, quoted in Andersen (2005:54) said that the idea that people have of one another guide their behaviour, even though there is no direct fit between what people believe, say and what they actually do.
Ideas also have a political reality because they affect how society works, who get rewarded and how things should and should not be. For example, if we believe that women's proper place is in the home, we are not likely to object to the sexist practices of employer discrimination but if we believe that women are as capable as men, we are likely to support policies and changes that would make more opportunities available to them.
Andersen x-rayed the social construction of knowledge about gender, especially knowledge reproduced in the media. He opined that the media exert a powerful influence on how we define reality and the roles of men and women within it. In a highly complex technological industrial society, this system of communication and knowledge play an increasingly important part in the generation and transmission of ideas.
Images of women conveyed by the dominant culture have been based on distortions and stereotypes that legitimate the status quo which at the same time falsely represent the actual experience of women in the society. As a result, the ideas we acquire regarding gender relations poorly prepare us for the realities being faced later.
Women tend to be portrayed in roles which are trivialized, condemned or narrowly define, resulting in the symbolic and annihilation of women by the media. However, men on the other hand are usually depicted in high status roles in which they dominate women.
Andersen canvassed that in children's television programming, gender and race stereotypes are probably at their worst. Considering the number of hours children's spent watching Television, this which act has a powerful agent of socialization for young children and this medium and other media cultivate gender stereotypes for children.
Morgan 1987, quoted in Andersen (2005) said the believe that women are happiest being at home raising children and men are being born with more ambition than women is associated with media content consumption.

The mass media carry a certain authority, particularly because they provide a common basis for social interaction. The nature of print and electronic media is also such that ones an image is represented, it losses the more fluid character it would have in reality. Ideas and characters appear fixed, given a singular impression of reality and rarely does the public get a glimpse of how these images are actually produced, instead they appear as objective facts.

There exist large expanse of attention given to women's issues in major news reporting, articles, features and editorials. However, the rate of this reportage could not be compared to the extent of space given to the male folks.

Women and Work
According to Obbo (1980:28) women are seen as merely assisting their male counterpart in the quest of power by building strong networks based on visiting, gossiping with relatives and neighbours. The role and contribution of women in the rural areas as farmers, wives, mothers and homemakers often prove a hindrance to female emancipation. In order to keep women secluded, the majority of men have developed argument justifying women's role as part of the African tradition.
It should be noted that traditions that break women's back, take their work for granted without reward, that keeps them indoor and insist morality only for women must be forgotten.

Baud, (1993:7) sees employment as the exchange of labour for cash or kind. Gender aspect of employment is considered from the point view of how women combine productive and reproductive tasks at the family and household level.

At a global level, women's participation in industry has increased. However gender differences in labour market segmentation are extensive. Women's access to employment in agro-industrial sector is relatively great whereas research indicate that other small scale industrial sectors are less open to women than to men (Baud 1993:9).

As entrepreneurs women tend to take up activities that require little capital and to build on existing skills. As workers, they are recruited more extensively than men into the more casual forms of labour, short term wage labour and especially unpaid family labour. (Woodward, 2001).

CONCLUSION
Sexuality is at the heart of male domination. It is seen as the primary means by which men control women and maintain their power over women in the society generally.
Sexual relations are determined by unequal power relationships in society. In other words, sexual relations both reflect and serve to maintain women's subordination. This male dominance affects the way women feel about their body, appearance, clothing, job specifications, health as well as the education they receive.
Significantly, sexuality affects women's position in the labour market in numerous ways. This flowing from being judged by their looks as right or wrong for the job to sexual harassment in the work place as common reason for leaving employment and the girl educational opportunities restricted by the exercise of male sexuality.
The labour market has become a site of complex and interrelated inequalities. Gender inequalities in the labour market are linked to and reinforced by those in other areas such as women and girl unequal access to education and training, which in turn has important ramifications for the terms on which women participate in paid employment, affecting their choice of jobs and opportunities for advancement.
Gender segregation in employment is further reinforced by media stereotypes of women in certain kinds of paid employment such as secretarial and clerical work or the health professions where they are largely represented in subordinate work roles, usually assisting or caring for others.
Men expect women to be politically conservative and non-innovative. They are being accused of going too far socially. However, women who did not keep up with social change rendered themselves socially and economically vulnerable.
Women must come out to fight for their rights because no one will fight for them. They desire wealth, power and status just as men did and as such men should not regard any attempt by women to seek more opportunities for acquiring these goals as their being "getting out of control"
Visiting the saints, being possessed by spirits or madness involving crying out for help will never bring about cultural, political or economic change in the positions of women.
This is a clarion call to media experts and practitioners to use media contents to discourage commonly held backward erroneous beliefs and notions about women and serve as a sine qua non in the advocacy of the rights of women in the nation.

The resultant effect of women inactivity in the society would spell nothing but doom for the future generation. Hence, women empowerment is an integral part of a nation's greatness.
Having considered this germane subject matter of gender and women empowerment, my humble recommendations are as follows:

TO THE GOVERNMENT
A) There should be active implementation and enforcement of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1997) and Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa, 2005 which Nigeria is a signatory. The rationale for this is because this protocol provides for elimination of discrimination against women (article 2), right to dignity (article 3), equal rights in marriage, access to justice and equal protection before the law, right to participation in the political and decision making process (article 9) as well as other rights such as adequate housing, economic & social welfare, inheritance, security, etc.
b) There is need for gender sensitivity in governance if progress is aspired for and for democracy to thrive, there must be an appreciable number of women in all spheres of life including top decision making positions.
c) There should be active implementation of statutory policies that promotes women's rights such as freedom from poor work conditions, battering, harassment, forced girl child marriages, genital mutilation, marginalization and degrading treatment.
d) Equal access to the nations' resources, with specific reference to the Agricultural sector.

TO THE MEDIA
The media in advocating for women empowerment should;
- Utilize its contents to correct erroneous backward beliefs about women.
- Educate the masses on the need to eradicate and put a cessation to obnoxious and vexatious cultural practices.
- Be diligent in editing and vetting news items, programmes that echo stereotype roles for women in the society.
- Get the citizenry well informed, educated and aware of the rights and role of women in the society.
- Make do of its Agenda-setting weaponry to strengthen the issue of women empowerment in the society.
- Publicize more about the achievements of women in various fields and endeavour and less of their vices.

TO WOMEN
The women folks among other things should endeavour to:
- Avoid being docile in their quest for empowerment
- Recognise the fact that nobody will come to their door step to empower them but they must go for it.
- Seek redress in the law court when any of their rights is being or likely to be contravened.
- Sponsor Bills that will better the lot of women in the National Assembly.
- Engage themselves in top decision making bodies, such as the legislature, judiciary and the executive so as to ensure equal representation.