By Helen Ovbiagele

It’s always a joy to hear of women who are dogged in the pursuit of their ambition.  Women who don’t allow culture or the usual societal concept of what a woman has been assigned by nature to be in life, discourage them from what they desire to be, or, what they want to do with their lives.

This year, there has been news of some focused women who have excelled and are still excelling at their career; the majority of them, past the usual sell-by-date that we assign to women.

The first of these women is Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of  Great Britain who celebrated 60 solid years on the throne, recently. Some people may scoff and say that hers is inheritance, and not a profession. Wrong.  She’s head of the British nation and also of the Commonwealth.

Hers is a job and a profession, from which she could have opted to resign, in order to pursue a more quiet, peaceful and private life, instead of a life where she and members of her family are constantly being heavily monitored, criticized and sometimes condemned  by the public.  Some of her subjects feel that the monarchy is obsolete, money-sapping and no longer relevant to their nation. This is enough to discourage some of us and make us throw in the towel, but she has been plodding on, holding her family together, and getting members to adapt to the changing world and behave responsibly.

Some time ago, there was speculation that she might abdicate in favour of her son, Prince Charles, because, if she has inherited the genes of her mother who died at 101, in 2002, her son who is 63,  may be a very old man before he gets to the throne.  The queen is 86 herself.  We thank God that she decided to hang on to her reign, because today, she’s Britain’s greatest asset, bringing respect and dignity to her country.

The name Tamae Watanabe, may mean nothing to many of us, but this 73 year old Japanese  grandmother, in May this year, became the oldest woman  to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.  What an amazing feat!  Not only for a woman, but for her age!  A British paper reported it thus: ‘A 73 year-old Japanese woman climbed Mount Everest yesterday (May 19th), smashing her own record as the oldest woman to scale the world’s highest mountain.

Tamae Watanabe reached Everest’s 29,035 ft (8,850m) summit from the northern side in Tibet with four team members, said Ang Tshering, of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association in Nepal. Mrs Watanabe set the original record when she climbed Everest in 2002 at the age of 63.’

Very little is available on the background/family life of Mrs. Watanabe,other than that she’s a grandmother. ‘She was born on 21st of November 1938 in Japan.  After completing studies at Tsuru University, she worked as a public office employee of Kanagawa Prefecture.  It was at this time, at age 28, she began mountain climbing.

In 1977, she climbed Mount McKinley.  She then climbed Mont Blanc, Mount Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua.  After her retirement from service, she returned to her hometown, where she lives at the foot of Mount Fuji, Japan’s tallest mountain, and in May 2002, she became the then oldest woman to climb Mount Everest.’

What makes this lady’s achievement stand out is the fact that after retirement from service, she went back to what she loves doing.  She hasn’t allowed age or her sex  to deter her from the tough challenges of mountain-climbing.  I’m sure that we have women her age here who had dreams they never realized, not because they’re timid, but for the simple fact that they would be ridiculed for trying to do something which is considered outside her age.  Take driving for example.

In western countries you have men and women in their nineties who still drive, because they’re still able to.  They go for regular scheduled driving tests, and as long as they’re capable and all their reflexes are there, the law permits them to drive.

In our country, a woman of fifty, driving on our roads, is made fun of by some other drivers who consider her too old to still be driving!  She doesn’t have to commit a traffic offence before she’s heckled – ‘Go get driver, mama!’ ‘Commot for road, madam!’   If you’ve always loved gardening, and you continue when you’re above middle-age, people around would mock you for being too stingy to employ a gardener to do it for you.

If you’re known to have a vehicle, the day you dare trek anywhere for exercise or whatever, you would be asked by concerned onlookers what happened to your car, as if you’ve committed an abomination by going on foot. That’s how narrow-minded and restricted in our thinking we are, and this is not good for the well-being of our women.

Every young person prays to grow old, and be able to continue doing many of the things that he/she has always enjoyed doing.  How would we feel, if we attain old age, and then we’re made to feel bad about being able to act independently?  I’m sure those who used to heckle others would take offence when heckled.

The other week, I read that 52 year old Merlene Ottey, a veteran sprinter, is in the frame to compete at her 8th Olympic games! ‘The Jamaican runner, who now represents Slovenia, set a season’s best time in the 100m of 11.82 seconds at a meeting in Maribor recently.  Although the time is short of the Olympic qualifying standard of 11.38, she could yet form part of Slovenia’s 4x100m relay team.

Ottey made her first Olympic appearance at the Moscow games of 1980, and then featured at every one of the next six games.  Though she was a multiple world champion in her favourite event, the 200m, she missed out on a gold medal on the biggest stage of all.  She was silver medallist in the 100m and 200m at Atlanta in 1996 – her fifth Olympics – and four years later, won silver again in the 4x100m relay.

In addition, she scooped 6 Olympic gold medals across five different games.  In 2010 she competed for Slovenia in the 4x100m relay at the European Championships in Barcelona at the age of 50, making her the oldest athlete in the history of the event.’

What a wonderful drive this woman has!  At 52, many people, not only women, would hang up their running boots.  Can you imagine a woman of 52, still entertaining hopes of continuing as an athlete here?  No way!  She would be booed off the field while practising.  Some may even suggest locking her up for ‘losing her mind’.

In politics, the name Segolene Royal, a  57 year-old French politician, comes to mind. She is the president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council, a former member of the national Assembly, a former government minister, and a prominent member of the French Socialist Party.  The first woman in France to be nominated by a major party, she was the Socialist candidate in the 2007 French presidential election, but lost to Nicolas Sarkozy.

She and her private life-partner of 30 years,  Francois Holland, the current president, separated later that year.  They have four children together.  She’s suffered several defeats in her political career, the most recent being a failed attempt to win a seat in the National Assembly in the June 2012 parliamentary elections, but she’s not giving up. She isn’t quitting active politics but remains in the field of play.

The essence of this write-up is the need for us to raise focused and determined ladies who keep their goal in life in view all the time, and who refused to have their ambition scuttled by failure, set-backs, and societal pressure.  Ladies whose god is not money; who are not looking for godfathers to make things happen for them, but rely on their hard work to be successful.  The nation would be better off with such women, because, hopefully, they will raise well-adjusted citizens for the nation.