A group of young women on Tuesday mounted strong arguments on the floor of Gordon House around the need for the development of a national action plan to encourage women’s economic empowerment and participation in education, digital transformation, and the care sector.

The discussion also looked at the need to ensure better performance by young boys in external exams over the next five years.

The Women in Leadership (YWiL) parliamentary sitting was staged in partnership with ParlAmericas and the Caribbean Women in Leadership (CWiL), through the Ministry of Gender Affairs.

Amoya Clarke, who moved the motion, in the role of minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport, pointed out that while care work increased productivity, and the standard of living in the society, women’s role in the unpaid care work sector also ironically leads to a lack of participation in the labour force, thereby decreasing productivity and standard of living.

“So care needs must be met if we wish to accomplish development goals, as the burden is primarily on our women; this can be accomplished through affordable nursing homes, and subsidies to companies to provide daycare services to their employees,” said Clarke.

She said areas should be identified where men and boys need support, such as issues with absentee fathers; stereotypes being perpetuated in homes; and variations in teaching approaches, all in order to lower the rate of underachievement in external examinations.

In its arguments, the ‘Opposition’ questioned whether the Government was serious about gender equity, pointing out that in tandem with strategies to advance empowerment, access, and equal pay for work, focus should be given to resocialisation at the grass-roots level.

Among the arguments made by the young women on that side was that in order for real change to occur, instead of allocating resources to top-down plans and policies, social workers should be deployed into communities to have sessions with young women, girls, and young men and boys.

Advancing that position, Amelia Fearon (leader of Opposition business) stated, “There is a bridge we must cross, there is an elephant we must acknowledge, which is the socialisation of our society. We have enough institutions; without a change in the cultural mindset, we cannot move forward.”

Fearon argued that too often women must prove their worth in the workplace and in the general society. “What’s the point of spending three to four years in a tertiary institution just to be second-guessed for a job that a man with a lower-level education is given,” she remarked. Fearon said despite the fact that more women graduate from tertiary institutions than men and break performance records in the public and private sectors, men still dominate various industries where qualified women could easily perform the same task.

The young women, nominated by parliamentarians and non-government organisations, underwent weeks of training to prepare for the unprecedented sitting. House Speaker Marisa Dalrymple Philibert; Gender Affairs Minister Olivia Grange; Opposition spokesperson on labour Dr Angela Brown Burke; and secretary general of ParlAmericas Alisha Todd brought brief remarks.