Ms. Roxanne George, Ms. Anande Trotman and President of the Guyana Bar Association Mr. Nigel Hughes at the opening of launch of the OAS-funded governance and democracy programme for women leaders in Guyana.
THE Guyana Bar Association (GBA) and the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL) yesterday launched a programme to further ensure the equal participation of women in democracy and governance here and in the rest of the Caribbean.

Women leaders in the political, academia and civil society fields were brought together yesterday at the National Library for the launch of the project and a workshop entitled, `Women’s Leadership and Political Participation: Training in Democracy and Governance’.

Immediate past president of the GBA and chairperson of its gender issues sub-committee, Ms. Anande Trotman, told the Chronicle that at the end of the day, the committee would have formulated resolutions “with respect to the way forward for the women of Guyana in terms of decision-making”.

“We realise that we have many pieces of legislation which can benefit women, but we have to go forward, we have to implement these pieces of legislation and we have to impact on policy,” Trotman stated.

Issues that were scheduled for discussion were the legal framework for women’s rights with respect to decision-making, the role of indigenous women in decision-making, local government and gender, and the reality of women aspiring to office in local government and parliament.

Women leaders: Participants at the workshop yesterday to launch the OAS-funded governance and democracy programme for women.
“Our goal basically is to empower and educate and mentor women who are interested in all levels of decision-making,” Trotman added.

Guyana’s partners in the project are Antigua and Barbuda and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Antigua and Barbuda has no female members of parliament, while St. Kitts has just one.

“Therefore, they feel that Guyana is a role model …in terms of what we have achieved especially with our recent constitution reform,” Trotman said.

As a result of constitutional reform in Guyana, political parties contesting elections are required to submit nomination lists with one third of their candidates being women.

“This is a great achievement in this region, and as a matter of fact, I think we are the only Caribbean territory that has achieved this,” Trotman said.

She said that because constitution reform is going on in all of the Caribbean territories, Guyana is seen as a role model, having completed its process a while back.

A Guyana delegation will move on to St. Kitts and Nevis to share the Guyanese experience later this year to help move Caribbean women along the path of social equality, Trotman said.