On Tuesday, Guyana joined the rest of the world in observing International Women’s Day. The expected obligatory messages and speeches were made, particularly with the United Nations’ designated theme in mind: ‘Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality.’ This theme is a call to governments to make national commitments that will close the gender equality gap, by the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals deadline. It is a call to action. It means governments, ours included, should not be permitted to continue the business-as-usual approach. There are things that need to change.
One of the huge problems dogging change in Guyana is the lack of statistical and empirical data required for planning. It is worth the risk of coming over as repetitious to ask yet again when we can expect to see the final results of the 2012 Population Census. It is now 2016 and to date only the preliminary results are available. There are detailed results for the 2002 census, but those must be outdated as a lot has changed in the past 14 years. The Bureau of Statistics should say what it needs to be able to produce the final report in a timely manner and government should see that what is requested is made available.
However, it is estimated, using the preliminary figures, that at September 15, 2012, there were 372,547 men and boys and 375,337 women and girls in Guyana – slightly over the 50-50 ratio favouring women. This should translate to more women being visible and active in the various spheres of life. But it does not because we still live in a very patriarchal society, where men seek to dominate by defining women’s roles and dictating what they should and should not do.
Women’s empowerment is a topic for discussion, but there has not been solid implementation of it. Ask the average group or government agency what they have done to empower women over the last five years and you’re likely to get as an answer a long list of workshops and conferences, skills training – where the focus is on cake decorating, hairdressing and the like. The practice over the years has been to empower women only in certain areas—sewing, tie-dying, catering—with the focus being on getting them to start small businesses so that they can take care of their children and families. This is an extremely narrow perspective, but both men and women have been guilty of shepherding women into the fields they believe are ordained for them. This is the reason why there are still expressions of awe if the odd woman bucks this trend, when in fact, others around the world have been doing it for decades.
It is a sad fact that in Guyana, women’s rights have become subsumed in everyone else’s and as a result are often forgotten or lost, when in fact they should be of the utmost priority given how long and hard they have been fought for. This newspaper reported yesterday that yet another woman had been chopped to death by her husband after she asked him to leave the home because he was drunk and there had been an argument over food. It would not be wrong or unfair to say that this was a case where the man considered his wife as his property and where she also saw herself that way. No amount of cake decorating or sewing classes can remove such a perception. Hence empowerment must result in women seeing themselves as individuals with rights and in men acknowledging this in their actions towards them. That is what 50-50 is all about and it is only when we begin to really work towards this that everything else will start to fall into place.
A case in point is the local government elections next week Friday. If there is any group or agency which, knowing that local government elections would have to be held sooner or later, took the initiative let’s say a year ago, to encourage women to become candidates in their communities, it should now take a bow. It would be a pleasant surprise to find that it had indeed been done; more than likely, it hasn’t. Why? Too many of us, men and women as well, still don’t see a role for women in local government, which is a great pity.
An article published in this newspaper yesterday revealed that in Georgetown only 20% of the candidates running for seats on the City Council are women. A strangely skewed position when one considers that Region 4, where the city is situated, is one of the regions, according to the preliminary report, where the number of women is above the national average.
One suspects too that in the rural areas, the figures would not be very different, and women’s participation could be even lower. Aside from the fact that many women eschew local politics because of its unpalatable flavour, there is a degree of ignorance which no one has really tried to address.
However, all is not lost. Local government elections will be held again in three years. Now would be a good time for women to start getting involved. There will be, in a few weeks’ time, many examples to learn from, especially as regards what not to do and how to do it better. There should be an impetus from now to have women and girls observe the workings of their local authorities and learn from them.
