Resolutions for International Women’s Day 2010:

Mechanisms for shared gender leadership

Manel ABEYSEKERA

I had the privilege of attending the UN’s first World Conference on Women in 1975 in Mexico City where Sirima Bandaranaike was the Keynote Speaker as the world’s first woman Prime Minister and Head of State.

I also attended the fourth Conference in 1990 in Beijing and the fifth in 1995 in New York. All these and many others have resulted in a mountain of documentation on platforms and plans for action and a plethora of pious resolutions being adopted.

Women’s Day is being celebrated in most countries including Sri Lanka and yet, hardly any cause for celebration in the true sense of the word is seen.

At the start of the movement for women’s rights by factory workers and poor women, staging public demonstrations, long before the UN took it up, it had an impact, partly because of the novelty of women on the march and because of the sincerity of the need they expressed.

Yet when men demanded their rights, they being the workers in key areas of national activity, they were able to hold many national institutions to ransom and thereby get their demands, while women, not being so visible nor necessarily working in essential services in the public domain, accepted what they could get.

Today, the scenario is somewhat different where in most countries, women receive equal wages for equal work, special facilities for night work because of their physical vulnerability maternity leave and creches in work places, and legislation recognizing equal rights to women. So where does then the problem lie?

The problem is that, though there is recognition and lip service paid to women’s rights as being human rights, they tend to be confined to paper and are not substantive and actually enjoyed by women.

The tragedy is in a country like Sri Lanka where women are more than half of the population, the sweat and earnings of women who are migrant workers, garment workers, plantation workers and agricultural workers are sustaining our economy yet, policy and decision making, even in matters affecting them are in the hands of men.

So the gender aspect the combination of the approach of men and women to any important aspect of life is lost.

I had hoped that after all the agitation that women activists have indulged into demand at least that 20 percent of women be nominated by political parties to increase the chance of enhancing the meager six percent representation of women in Parliament, has fallen on deaf ears.

Perhaps the crux of the problem is that the working committees of political parties which decide on candidatures comprise mostly men. The fault is also that women party members are not in a strong position in this as well as in other key areas of their parties.

Women must achieve this not only for them to enter Parliament but also they could influence gender fair decision making and policies at national level.

Therefore, we need to look at areas other than the purely political - while continuing to strengthen women’s position within parties to influence them from within -and try to achieve the goal of equality at least in those though they too are not devoid of politics.

This should be in value terms of getting equal opportunities, responsibilities and power in handling public affairs together with the men at every level through “gender mainstreaming”, which makes everything “gender relevant” and not irrelevant.

In reality there are no “women’s issues” but only “human issues” which become women’s issues to correct when women are excluded and marginalized from dealing with them in discussion and decision making and in ensuring that their outcomes are positive to both men and women.

From time immemorial, history has been “his story”, never “her’s”, and the norm which has evolved is through the patriarchal “masculine identity” in public affairs and leadership in governance, which is an integral part of politics, and in the “masculine construct” of politics itself as well as administration.

It is these that women must endeavour to remove. To be realistic, one needs to consider both men and women in the same situation and solutions for achieving equality. In other words is the sum total of the human rights that men in normal circumstances enjoy and solutions must be tailored not to some “best practices” but to the realities of the country. The World Bank has pointed out, since “one size will not fit all”.

There is also no need for women to conform to the male image when men are not expected to conform to the feminine mystique: the essence and value of a shared action is that the different psyches of the two human beings are brought to play in it.

The first step is not to antagonize the men and make them fearful of losing their superior position but to make them uncomfortable in their monopoly of power and make them understand that equality through gender mainstreaming benefits both and therefore merits support.

At the same time, there is also a need to sensitize women who can be tradition bound and make them understand the importance of “being there” at the right place for gender equality and mainstreaming. It is they who must realize their self-worth and emerge to the forefront to take their place and responsibility in civil society, not only for themselves but for all, and thereby set the correct ‘norm’ for future generations.

Let men be men and women be women so that the combined, complete human psyche could lead humanity to a better world and life for all and let it be soon.