The training of women on issues such as local government management and budget, good governance, the Parliamentary system, and even regional issues like the Caricom Single Market and Economy, though seemingly small is a huge forward step towards a better, brighter Guyana. Not only does this kind of training make a more educated and informed grouping of women, but also, as a consequence of being more educated and informed, there is a more efficient and non-contentious implementation of whatever projects and programmes such women will directly and indirectly be involved in. As we all know, women's participation and involvement reduces antagonisms; their approach tends to be more one in which they are 'seekers of solutions' rather than 'identifiers of grievances.'
The Guyana Bar Association, which presently I head, is guided by the self-evident truth of the equal human worth of all people, male and female. But it is a Bar Association which understands the conditions of inequality which women have had to live and work under; and it is a Bar which will promote in an affirmative manner the rights and broader education of women.
An honest appraisal of the status of women over the centuries will reveal an exclusion of women from public and political life. Their primary location was in the private family sphere largely under a patriarchal power. This un-freedom of women was taken for granted, and substantially persists up to today because the notion of a free individual is a male construct. Many a law which originated out of our common law system - and I can give myriad examples - had and presently has in its gaze a male subject. How many of you know that in the past a killing of a wife by a husband led to a homicide charge, whereas when the wife killed the husband the graver charge of petty treason followed?
Tradition and law were and have often been against women. The history of political discourse reveals an exclusion of women. Challenging this exclusion and changing the rules of the political club are part of the battle for women.
This challenge has happened over the centuries and decades and has realised wonderful achievements: the vote, married women's property rights, equal parental rights over children, divorce on equal terms, control over sexuality and reproduction, legislation on equality and against discrimination and so on. But being granted, after major battles, these rights, privileges and powers from those who controlled the State [largely men], there is still the need for women to have more space created for them. When unforeseen injustices are created by such greater space, the State must also come to their rescue. Katherine O' Donovan in an article "Gender Blindness or Justice Engendered" succinctly argues: "Whereas men's freedom lies in the construction of a private life free from the interference of the State, women often need the State to enter this domain to rid them of its tyrannies. Public life is imprinted with the colours of the private. The injustices present in the domestic realm are reproduced in public".
Secondly, there must be fearlessness and legitimacy which must characterise this journey into equality for women. The lessons of history have proven that being deliberative in inquiry as to the huge volume of grievances is the surest way of discerning what the ills and wrongs are of the woman condition. Much of the ills and wrongs will have as their sources culture and law.
After having inquired in a deliberative manner, there is need for a skeptical scrutiny of these sources which involves an examination of values, practices and norms which will show relations of domination and subordination. This scrutiny must be fearlessly carried through to show their negative impact on women, notwithstanding all manner of rebuttals from a variety of unexpected quarters.
Defenders of practices and values oppressive to women up to this day use arguments for cultural autonomy from the Western or Developed world to reject women's rights. You only have to look in some fundamentalist States.
But not only there. Conservatives in countries such as the USA, India and South Korea and right here in Guyana have accused women [they call them feminists] of seeking to impose an agenda that undermines deeply held traditional values. As a result they pit many women against their own culture; and women against women. You must not be surprised when you are told in your fight for greater rights and more space how you are betraying your culture, your religion, your ethnicity, your identity. But you must not give up even if you be severely criticised or even expelled. You will do your womanhood the greatest honour, and mankind the greatest favour.
The method of a deliberative enquiry and a skeptical scrutiny will lead firstly, to an expansion of the public dialogue about women's' issues; and secondly, to more women's participation in public and political life to an extent where the views of previously unheard of women will inform public decision-making.
Sisters in law, sisters all, the Bar Association will be your strongest ally and supporter in this unfinished journey. And I hope that this workshop better prepares you for this long march.