In her novel Dangerous to Know, English-born best selling writer Barbara Taylor Bradford describes a sixteenth century matriarch who had stipulated that her huge house should always be passed down to a female inheritor. The reason Mrs Bradford’s invented character gave for insisting that a man must never own the property, was that she wanted her female descendants always to be protected. And she figured that owning property could offer that protection. While the matriarch Henrietta Bailey was not the heroine of the novel the reference to and description of her is neither by the way nor inadvertent. Mrs Bradford has always written about strong and independent women beginning with her first book, the best-selling A Woman of Substance. Were her characters real, they would have been true champions of women’s empowerment.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) State of the World’s Children 2007 Report, which was launched here on Monday last, speaks of reversing the pitiable state of some of the world’s worse off children by empowering women. The report, titled ‘Women and Children: The Double Dividend of Gender Equality’ goes back to that old, but even more relevant today, theme, that gender equality will promote betterment not only for children, but for humankind at large. It is quite possible that UNICEF, which has now been around for 60 years, has been saying this from the inception and though it must be noted that this organisation has made headway in bettering children’s lives worldwide, these are creeping gains rather than the massive sweeping strides it would have hoped for.
The theme also lends to the third of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), signed onto by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000, which seeks to see the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women by 2015. The major target of this third goal is the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005-it has not been eliminated-and at all levels by 2015.
The report speaks of the world “reaping the double dividend” and points to how promoting gender equality and empowering women will help reduce hunger and poverty, save lives, combat HIV and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability, which in a nutshell covers all of the other MDGs. It is well-known, however, that meeting this most crucial goal requires significant input by governments in terms of legislation that must be enforced, and budgetary allocations for programmes and policies, as well as constant policing by civil society to ensure that promises are kept, targets met and that gains made are not reduced.
The report also makes reference to equality in inheritance, noting that elderly women especially may face double discrimination on the basis of both gender and age, since women tend to live longer than men, often lack control of family resources and can face discrimination from inheritance and property laws. It also noted that very few developing countries have safety nets for older people. While this has been articulated before, it is an area which is still largely overlooked.
In Guyana, far too few women and girls inherit their parents’ estates. And this is the case even when the parent in question is a single mother. The practice passed down over the ages is for the sons in the family to inherit; the thinking being that the daughters would marry men who would take care of them. There is no provision for the women who will never wed and they are very often left destitute. Apart from which, few marriages today are still based on the ability of the husband to provide financial security.
Arrangements like the one espoused by Mrs Bradford’s fictional character would cater for the unmarried spinster and unwed mother, as well as the victims of domestic violence who are forced to stay in an abusive relationship because they have no place to go and no prospects. There may be a few Henrietta Baileys around, who knows? And there must be others who can be converted and who UNICEF and the organisations it works with must reach out to, while they also lobby governments to reform inheritance and property laws. Women empowering women can and should encompass more than community-based and grassroots organisations championing the cause of poorer women, while this still remains crucial to taking gender equality forward.
