Novel paths to the road of political activism
A FEW WEEKS ago a number of women successfully completed a course of study designed to introduce them to the arts of politics. The course is one of several initiatives of the Guyana Women's Leadership Institute (GWLI) which is based at Cove and John on the East Coast of Demerara.
About the same time, there was heard a polite but very assertive clamour from a group of respected professional women who are now lobbying for women to be accorded a more representative presence on the lists of parties contesting the upcoming general elections. A principal objective of this clamour is that a greater number of women must be sworn in as Parliamentarians when the government is formed after the next national polls.
Taken together, these two developments are sending urgent messages to the male politicians that women are no longer content to accept just a sprinkling of positions in the corridors of power and councils of decision-making when they are approximately 51 per cent of the populace. And they have a point. The historical realities that determine to a great extent the place women should occupy in the civil processes are forever tilted in favour of the male of the species.
Whether it is a result of the Judeo-Christian principles with its veneration of the male - from the boy-child to the elderly statesman - or whether it springs from the notion that women are the weaker sex constantly in need of protection and are therefore incapable of holding positions of power outside the walls of the home, the western system is designed to accord women a less important place in decision-making even in those matters that affect their material existence.
It is easy to understand some women's impatience with an evolutionary process, especially after studies have shown that at the current rate of progress, women will have to wait for another 450 years before they can be fully integrated into the realms of power and decision-making. This staggering fact has prompted some countries to make it mandatory for their local government bodies and municipalities to reflect a certain percentage of women candidates at administrative levels.
In Brazil, for instance, the authorities have made it mandatory that 20 per cent of all candidates for municipal office be women. As a direct result of this law, 100,000 women ran for public office there in 1996. Promoted by her own daughter, one woman who successfully contested an office, became a tremendous source of inspiration to millions of her sisters.
We hasten to admit that not every woman has her sights set on wresting from men, the power levers of their societies. Many women are quite content to be mothers and homemakers and they derive great happiness from making their homes oases of peace and love for their husbands and their children. Other career women gain tremendous satisfaction from skilfully juggling the demands of jobs and homes, while those women who exercise the creative imagination have ways of expressing themselves to the world sometimes without uttering a word. These women have no desire to throw all men out of the seats of power so that they could take over the world.
This does not mean that we see no virtue in women striving for civic and political power if they feel that they have a legitimate and worthwhile contribution to make. There is also a critical need for women and men to correct the many injustices women suffer because of their so-called "biological destiny".
And if gender injustice and discrimination can be alleviated by the increased numbers of female representatives in the councils of power, then both women and men will have to pursue this course.
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