By Josephine Agbonkhese & Anino Aganbi

IN a world where strenuous, highly technical and intellectual jobs were considered the exclusive preserve of boys while girls were wired and advised, to think only of professions that required less muscular power, it’s can be quite amazing how women folks have evolved over time.

All around us, women are shattering barriers and breaking into fields like finance, medicine, engineering, driving heavy duty/articulated vehicles, and much more, without compromising their femininity or roles as wives and mothers.

Yet, in spite of having to combine work with personal life, most of these women are also giving their male colleagues a run for their money.

Engineering
One of such women is Engr. (Mrs)Mayen Adetiba, who has, at different times, led the engineering profession both in Nigeria and abroad. Adetiba is today a household name and a force to reckon with in engineering practice in Nigeria. Her exploits are contained in an exclusive interview she had with Woman’s Own in this edition.

Medicine
One of the most recent jaw-breakers in medicine is Dr Abimbola Abolarinwa, who became Nigeria’s first female Urological Surgeon a couple of years ago. Interestingly, Urology deals with diseases of the male and female urinary tract and the sex organs in male.

“Initially, I had wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. But when I started my residency training, it suddenly occurred to me that urology is very practical; it cuts across being a surgeon and a physician at the same time and there was a need for the specialty. That was why I chose urology.

All the while, I never thought it as being male-dominated; it never occurred to me that there was no female before me in training. I just wanted it because I loved it. I just found myself in it and that was when I realised that I actually got trapped in what was a male-dominated specialty,” Abimbola said in an interview.

A female truck driver

Auto mechanic
Another woman who stands out in very strenuous male terrains is Engr. Sandra Aguebor-Ekperouh, Nigeria’s popular auto mechanic. Engineer Sandra Ekperouh broke a major yoke by becoming the first woman to join the auto mechanic profession in a society where nobody could ever visualize a woman going under a car to fix it. Her Lady Mechanic Initiative of Nigeria today consists of over 3,000 women working as mechanics. Sandra’s bold step began as a dream when she was barely 13-year-old.

Commercial bus driving
Women have also evolved as commercial drivers of heavy, articulated vehicles since late Funmilayo Ransome Kuti became the first female to drive a car in the 30s in the country. Today, women folks have looked beyond cars and are building careers for themselves as drivers of articulated trucks and more complex vehicles.

“I’d never seen any woman driving trailers. My curiosity pushed me to try the profession. As it is, I have a passion for driving. So, driving heavy duty vehicles became a reality and I’ve been doing it for twelve years now,” the first female trailer driver from the northern region, Hajiya Rabi’atu Abubakar Mashi, said. Hajiya now works as a trailer driver with Dangote Cement Company.

But this fete hasn’t been without its own challenges. As Olayinka Oloruntoba, one of the drivers of the popular BRT buses in Lagos puts it:

“Sometimes, you get to the station to load and some passengers refuse to board because they see a lady behind the wheels. At other times, if you are driving on say the Third Mainland Bridge and there is a slight vibration, passengers would start to panic. But all that was at the beginning.

Things are better now. Some of my passengers even confess now that they feel safe when I’m the one driving.”

Butcher
The influx of women into male-dominated terrains has been without the slightest limits— abattoirs too can attest to that as more women take to butchering and meat selling as a profession.

One of such phenomena women is Mrs. Lara Sadiku, a butcher in one of the abattoirs in Lagos State.
“I love what I do; it’s just like any other job in which you have to learn for a while. I learned meat business for four years as an apprentice because that is what I enjoy doing. People see this as a dirty job but to me, it’s okay,” she said.
Carpentry

In what sector will one not find women these days? Carpentry too is having its feel of the dynamic specie.
Mrs. Terese Mbama, a female carpenter, said she went into carpentry because she noticed children furniture were not being done properly.