HOW WOMEN LEAD: Celebrating girls & WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day (IWD), March 8, was an important milestone for the UWI’s Institute for Gender and Development Studies. We are celebrating 20 years of teaching, research and outreach to promote gender equality and development.
The growing number of graduates with bachelor’s, master’s and PhDs in gender and development will help to promote the equality and development of both males and females as the Caribbean becomes an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. Our work is helping to integrate gender perspectives in many facets of national development to overcome hidden barriers that undermine skills and potential and promote equal rights and justice for all.
This year’s IWD celebrations jointly recognised important milestones of two of our partners — the Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre and the Bureau of Women’s/Gender Affairs which are celebrating 31 and 40 years respectively.
We joined these and other partners to jointly host a women’s exposition at the University of the West Indies.
Guest Speaker for the opening ceremony, Jacqueline Sharp, president of Scotiabank in Jamaica, represents the possibility of women breaking the invisible ‘glass ceiling’ and becoming top leaders in the corporate world on merit.
Many women entrepreneurs showcased their work. The expo demonstrated the importance of having policies and programmes to support the economic empowerment of women in micro, small and medium businesses, as well as women business owners. Integrating gender perspectives in economic policies will enable the country to achieve Vision 2030, help women to be independent, and reduce their risk of becoming victims of gender-based violence.
On Saturday we also celebrated the achievements of our rural women and their organisations such as the Jamaica Network for Rural Women Producers and the thousands of household workers who enable many other workers to go to work. We celebrated the milestone of the Jamaica Household Workers Association, established by the Bureau of Women’s Affairs in the 1990s, which has become the Jamaica Household Workers Union, with an islandwide membership of 3,000 members in 11 chapters. The union’s strong leadership has helped to form the Caribbean Domestic Workers Network. Their leadership at the International Labour Organisation’s conference in 2012 resulted in the adoption of ILO Convention 189: Decent Work for Domestic Workers.
We celebrate with the Bureau of Women’s/Gender Affairs the advances made in adopting the National Policy for Gender Equality in 2011. Ministries, departments and agencies have appointed over 180 gender focal points who have been trained and have developed action plans to integrate gender perspectives in all development policies and programmes.
We salute the sterling contribution of countless civil society organisations and leaders who continue to support the development of women and also promote gender equality. The future of our society will look brighter with an improved balance of women and men in leadership and governance.
This IWD we celebrated an important milestone for our girls: the adoption of the reintegration policy for pregnant teens. This will ensure that young girls who become pregnant while in school will be able to continue their education as a basic human right. Fewer of them will be assigned to live in poverty and become victims of domestic violence.
The above was contributed for International Women’s Day, observed on March 8, and as part of the conversation around women in leadership positions.
Dr Leith Dunn is head of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at UWI.
