Dear Editor,

From even the days of Adam and Eve, woman showed herself to be as progressive as we will ever become.

What Melinda Gates, of the powerful and wealthy Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has failed to recognise and impress upon us in her thrust to further empower women is that, while women make this world go round, men are like the axis on which it turns.

We can ill afford the continued marginalisation, disregard, and ‘spoiling’ of our boys and men, setting them up for a fall, whether it is with one-sided rhetoric, such as Melinda Gates’ stance, or in various social institutions and capacities.

Although men seem to be the ones who are holding back the progress, being perpetrators of much of our social ills, according to Dr Herbert Gayle, local social anthropologist, in one of his presentations, males from as young as teenagers will sacrifice themselves in order to invest in, or for the eventual sakes of their female counterparts, such as siblings.

Dr Gayle also pointed out that we get a wider and more rippling dissemination of resources when men are given these resources, as opposed to women. However, it is not that the resources need to be put more in the hands of our males, it is the sense of responsibility and dignity which go with it that need to be ramped up.

This mandate must be demanded of our males and society, not just merely encouraged or asked of them.

Corporate Jamaica, Government, charities, social norms and culture, and our women, must allow and demand that the fathers be a requisite part of the eligibility of any assistance given to, or in the progress of, any child. It is the father, as provider, protector, and the authority who we need to empower and recognise, because it is he who God has given the wheel to hold, while woman, spins it.

Andre O Sheppy

Norwood, St James

astrangely@outlook.com