EXECUTIVE of the Coordinating Council on Women and Gender Equality, Indra Chandarpal, made some pertinent comments on preparing Guyanese women for leadership roles.

Chandarpal made these comments while giving the feature address at a workshop titled: “Empowering women to become leaders in the Trade Union Movement”. The venue was the Guyana Labour Union Headquarters, Woolford Avenue, last Friday. She asserted that empowering women means equipping them with the necessary skills to advance to leadership positions and noted that only through empowerment could women take their rightful place in society.

If women want empowerment, she observed, then they must be appropriately prepared by constantly upgrading their professional skills and actively seeking promotion in the workplace – all within a framework of knowledge of the laws of Guyana and the rights secured by the trade union movement.

Chandarpal’s comments give ample food for thought. It is worth noting that for several decades, Guyanese women’s attendance and performance at learning institutions from nursery to university have steadily increased. For a very long time, our education system has been producing female scholars whose academic abilities match or surpass those of their male contemporaries.

However, despite the consistently high output of well-qualified females, only a few women move up to leadership roles. Clearly, the majority of skilled women are being out-challenged in the leadership race by men of equal or lesser academic qualifications and ability.

There is no doubt that conditions in the workplace heavily favour men. Sociologists give long lists of problems women have to deal with in job situations and find that men don’t have to face the same problems. Speaking at the Summit on the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico on January 13 this year, Executive Director of UNIFEM, Noeleen Heyzer, noted that women comprise over 50 per cent of the world’s population and are, therefore, essential to addressing the pressing challenges the world faces today.

These include achieving the Millennium Development Goals, creating more accountable institutions of governance, ensuring more equitable resource allocation, combating HIV/AIDS and guaranteeing peace and security. But Heyzer noted that everywhere, women continue to be under-represented — as leaders and problem solvers, decision-makers or elected officials.

“Many discriminatory laws and practices still prevent women from playing a role in shaping the policies that affect their lives,” Heyzer noted, adding that many women still do not have full understanding of their rights, or knowledge of how to participate in complex economic and political processes, or how to hold their leaders accountable.

And in spite of their potential to offer innovative solutions, especially in a time of crisis, they are rarely those to whom nations turn first. “There is an urgent need for the leadership and participation of women if we are to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. But the biggest hurdle for women is created in the home.

From early childhood, girls are conditioned by society, including the females in their households, to defer to men. Even highly trained professional women find it hard to rid themselves of this negative type of social conditioning and are too inhibited when it comes to assuming leadership.

Upgrading skills is not sufficient to empower most women to take up the mantle of leadership. In addition to having the required skills, they need to acquire the right mindset.

They need to assert themselves as men’s equals in leadership; they can only do so if they truly believe women have an equal right to lead. To be empowered, women must get rid of the hobbling mindset that men must lead and they must follow. That is the key to recognising and exploiting leadership opportunities.

Guyanese women do not have a problem getting the skills required for leadership. They have proved this for several generations. Their problem is acquiring and cultivating the desire to lead. That is why we have so many skilled women and so few female leaders.

What Guyana needs is more skilled women who also have the desire and ability to lead. If more women want to get leadership roles as badly as men do, they will create opportunities for themselves. By creating the desire to lead in Guyanese women will make all the difference to their prospects of empowerment.