Happy International Women's Day! 
 
Under the #EU-funded #WACOMP, many talented female professionals are working to strengthen competitiveness in West Africa and foster women empowerment throughout the various programme activities.
 #IWD2022 #InternationalWomensDay #ClimateAction

About involvement of Women in Quality improvement, let's listen to Mrs. Chinyere Egwuonwu, the immediate past Director, Standards Development  Standards Organisation of Nigeria.  

What is quality for you?

Being a standards expert, for me quality is simply defined as "fitness for intended use." This mainly means "meeting or exceeding the customer’s intended use”.

This definition places the customer as the target who plays an active role when rating the quality of a product and aims to create a standard based on customers’ opinion, meaning that the quality of a good or service is not determined only by purely objective parameters but by comparing a set of inherent characteristics with a set of requirements (standards, specifications etc). Exceeding customer expectations. " brings about competitive advantage. Therefore, quality can simply be defined as satisfying your customer and having a competitive advantage over others.

What role should and can women play to promote it, especially in Nigeria and widely in West Africa?

1. Women in Nigeria and widely in West Africa in general can promote quality by ensuring that they apply and ensure quality in all that they do, in their jobs and businesses through the use of standards /specifications.
2. Women should participate in standards development, to shape the world by contributing their strength to make the world a better place, to promote life, work, education, etc., and to help the next generation move towards a brilliant future.
3. Women should ensure that they have higher proportion of women experts in technical fields, particularly in standards development where today they are often under-represented. This bias can be broken by teaching girls at a young age that they can have a quality life, become whoever they want to be and work in any discipline they choose. It also starts by giving all girls and young women in the world access to quality education from grade school to University.

Question 4. What should and can Standardization contribute to a culture of quality in the region?

1. Standardisation and adherence to standards in the region will: 
2. Ensure that products and services produced and traded in the region are safe and of good quality.
3. Facilitate and encourage intra-Regional and international trade by the removal of technical barriers to trade, increases market access and boosts cooperation at both regional and international levels.
4. Ensure that standards are used to regulate and monitor industry so as to prevent poor business practices within the region.
5. Trust in products and services in the region
6. Dissemination of best practices
7. Economic growth of the region
8. Market penetration and Global acceptability of regional products and services.
9. Increased sales
10. Knowledge and sharing best practice
11. Increased productivity