We have been so conditioned to think of power as male that a powerful woman is an aberration.

When we say fathers are "helping," we are suggesting that child care is a mother's territory, into which fathers valiantly venture. It is not.

Surround her with a village of aunties, women who have qualities you’d like her to admire. Talk about how much you admire them. Children copy and learn my example. Talk about what you admire about them.

Some people will say, “Oh, but women have the real power, bottom power.” And for non-Nigerians, “bottom power” is an expression in which I suppose means something like a woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. But “bottom power” is not power at all. Bottom power means that a woman simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time, somebody else’s power. And then of course we have to wonder when that somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick, or impotent.

Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.

I am just as human as the man.

Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.

Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl. 'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything. Ever.

If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach their full potential.