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International Women’s Day
Guyana is one country that does not need to be told why there should be an “International Women’s Day”. Just a perusal of the headlines of the newspapers should convince even the misogynists amongst us that if such violence against women is extrapolated worldwide then we have an epidemic of frightening proportions. Just one day set aside for reflection is not enough. And that is just identifying one wrong that women suffer from disproportionately.
So the UN agreed that on March 8 – tomorrow – all of us should consider the status of women in our society and especially their struggle for equality, peace and development. More pertinently, we might review what has been done since last year to correct the disabilities identified since the last commemoration. Take the case of the UN itself – of its 189 highest ranking diplomats only eleven are women. And nothing much has changed in all other levels of political participation. Where is the equality?
In Guyana, we are told that we should be proud that 33% of our parliamentarians are women. Worldwide, the percentage is only 14.1 percent and it makes us understand that while strides have been made we still have a long road to travel for full equality. From such numbers, it should not surprise us to learn that only 24 women have been elected heads of state or government in last century. And tiny Guyana was one of them.
But we return to the routine violence that is inflicted on women as a matter of course in our society and ask all Guyanese tomorrow to make a resolution reduce this inequity. All efforts in this effort must begin at the individual level since, to our credit; we have no organised wars here that rape and plunder women as in some countries. As we have been insisting in this space, the differential and discriminatory treatment of women is a reflection of the power relations immanent in our society and until these are altered, the status quo will remain.
Discrimination on the basis of sex is called “sexism” and interestingly enough while Guyana is far from being any haven of sexual equality, the thrust for improvement is rather muted. Take the case of equal pay for equal work – the fact that we do not have any statistics on our Guyanese situation is quite instructive as to how the powers that be consider this to be a problem. Anecdotal evidence suggests that our women match the international norm where they earn an average of 30-40% less than men for the same job. Internationally, the majority of the world’s 1.3 billion absolute poor are women and we can be sure that Guyana is no different.
This is disgraceful and women can do worse than begin with themselves to rectify this anomaly. They have to insist on being treated as equals – they cannot continue to define themselves through the eyes of men. That would be to consign themselves to perpetual domination. Discrimination often happens because people make decisions about other people which are not based on genuine reasons, i.e. they are prejudiced. The prejudice or stereotype about women in Guyana is that they are objects not subjects.
Take the case of the music that is so popular in the streets that is generally composed by men. They glorify the most one-sided infliction of violent male fantasies onto the female body imaginable and yet females have been conditioned to see nothing wrong with it. Female singers do not reciprocate the treatment to men but rather accept the male premises of female humiliation in their compositions. Women can start by either rejecting derogatory sexist and misogynic treatment – or maybe doling out equal treatment.
One of the bright spots for females in Guyana has been their superior performance in the last decade in the educational system. They now form a significant majority in our premier secondary schools. We hope that as they work their way into the power institutions of our society they do not allow themselves to be peripheralised.
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