Women deserve a good life

Mar 10, 2019 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

---

International Women’s Day (8 March) was held this year under the theme “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change”.

The following are excerpts from an address by His Excellency David Granger President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana to the ‘Women and Gender Equality conference’ held on August 27, 2015.

Women have made some significant strides over the past four decades and there is now a much greater awareness of women’s rights. There is however, still a long way to go for women to achieve full equality. The gap in economic, social and political achievement between men and women remains wide. Inequality persists.
The enforcement of enabling legislation is often ineffectual. The momentum for change has slowed and the economic and political gap between men and women is still too wide. Women and girls, despite a few remarkable exceptions are still being left behind and are relatively disadvantaged.
Episodic initiatives to promote women’s rights and offer them greater opportunities have failed to bring about full equality. A comprehensive long-term gender policy, aimed at opening opportunities, promoting empowerment and providing protection for women is needed.
The proposed National Gender Policy should aim to eradicate discrimination against women. It should be used to safeguard emotional and mental integrity and physical safety in women. It should result in women having a greater say in the decision making at all levels of society. There should be no shortage of legislation to protect women and to promote their rights.
A major obstacle to equality is the prevalence and persistence of poverty. Poverty impacts significantly on the well-being of mothers and babies across the country. It is a well-known fact that children born to mothers living in poverty, among whom are mothers who head single-parent households, face greater challenges to everyday survival.
Poverty reduction, ought to be an important means to lift the living standards of women and children in the poorest communities. This aspect of government policy, however, has not had its intended effect. Measured against five indicators:

• Poverty level
• Cost of living
• Household income
• Children’s formal schooling
• Children’s post schooling employment

The quality of life of many mothers and their families in Guyana can be described as low. It is a modern-day miracle, that many mothers manage their families on their meagre earnings in the face of massive impediments in our society.
Women must be provided with greater opportunities if they are to escape from poverty. Your government proposes to consider various measures to assists women to lift their families out of poverty.

• We will encourage greater entrepreneurship.
• We will encourage the establishment of micro credit facilities and access to small business loans which can all have a positive effect on poor households headed by women.

Your government is also prepared to negotiate concessionary financing through microcredit organisations for lending to women. In addition, we are prepared to expand existing microcredit schemes targeting women and single-parent households. Thousands of our women can lift their families out of poverty and join the numbers of happy families and happy households through such measures.
Your government wants more women at work. Many women cannot find satisfactory jobs nowadays. Young mothers, in increasing numbers have been travelling to the eastern Caribbean and bordering states, Suriname, Venezuela and Brazil in search of work. Their contribution of remittances to support their families and as an element in the gross national income is substantial, but this contribution comes at a cost.
It is a symptom of serious social problems and through prolonged separation can have an adverse impact on their children’s upbringing. Young female school leavers also might have received education, practical skills and social orientation, but the economy has not been providing enough jobs even to those graduates.
Your government intends to establish employment centres in the coming years in all our administrative regions to allow for persons seeking jobs to be matched with available employment opportunities. Through this process we anticipate that women will be able to find jobs closer to their homes and will not have to work far away from where they live.
Your government also recognizes that many women are unable to take up full time employment because they have to take care of children. These responsibilities require them to stay closer to home or at home.
Your government is prepared to consider offering tax rebates to companies which establish day-care centres for women, for mothers, so that women do not have to leave their children unattended when they are in the workplace. We want to make women happy when they’re at work. If they are worrying about the wellbeing of their children it will affect their work. We want happy women. Happy women will head happy families and happy households.
Women have already made their mark in education and through education, but there must be increased access to education by girls if we are to have greater equality. Women have narrowed the education gap but there is still a gap.
They have made considerable strides because of their performance which you can see in the results every year, but far too many girls are still being left out, particularly in the hinterland and some of them unfortunately have fallen victim to trafficking.
Your government wants to ensure that successes, particularly for disadvantaged women are magnified. We are keen on ensuring that those women who would benefit, who had not benefited from a formal education, who have dropped out of school for some reason or the other and did not complete their schooling can have access to remedial programmes that focus on numeracy and literacy. This access would allow them to improve their situation and allow them to enjoy employment opportunities that they do not now enjoy.
Your government will also actively encourage women to enter technical professions such as architecture, agriculture and engineering, in which they are now underrepresented.
In short, your government over the next five years will remain committed to achieving the objectives of full equality for women, of building happy families and happy households throughout the country.
The proposed National Gender and Development Policy which we have met here to discuss crafting should contribute most of all, to promoting greater equality. As we pursue this policy let us bear in mind that the struggle for equality is not for women alone, it is a national goal.
Let us join hands therefore with our sisters in all ten regions to promote greater equality. Let us consolidate these objectives; let us consolidate our efforts in the five years ahead by crafting this National Gender and Development Policy.
One that could be relevant to our circumstances and our conditions, and we should also embrace the high ideals that women have struggled for over the last hundred years in Guyana. Women deserve a good life.
May God bless Guyanese women.

---

---