Lankan women fare better than regional counterparts

A millennium development goal achieved:

Sanjeevi Jayasuriya

Women in Sri Lanka are better off than their counterparts in other developing countries, especially in the SAARC region. This favourable situation is reflected by the overall educational level of the Sri Lankan women and the number of professionally qualified women and such women holding management positions, The Colombo Plan Secretariat Secretary General Dato’ Patricia Yoon-Moi Chia said.

However, few women have been able to advanced beyond the glass ceiling and to reach top level decision–making positions in the private and public sector, she said at the induction ceremony of the Young Business and Professional Women Sri Lanka held on last Friday in Colombo.

The positive Government policies have contributed to high literacy and education levels among women. The social policies of free health, free education and subsidized food adopted since the post colonial era, have significantly improved the quality of life of the women in Sri Lanka, she said. The islandwide network of health services, especially maternity and child health services established over four decade ago, has contributed substantially to the improvement in the maternity mortality rate from 16.5/1,000 to 1.4/1,000 and infant mortality rate from 140/1,000 to 17.2/1,000. Since independence in 1948 to 2010, statistics have also shown vast improvements in the crude death rate which fell from 21.9/1,000 to 5.6/1,000 and life expectancy has risen from 41.6 years to 74.8 years.

The introduction of free primary, secondary and tertiary education including university education has led to a rapid expansion of educational opportunities. As education is a major avenue of upward socio-economic mobility, it accelerated the equal access to education. The female labour force increased more rapidly than male labour force as a consequence of rising educational levels. With these achievements, the government has successfully achieved several millennium development goals (MDGs) such as universal primary education, gender equality, child mortality rates and improved maternal health, she said.

Today we have to face the reality that women will have to increasingly play a bigger role in view of the large percentage of female undergraduate that enter local universities. Therefore, women have to assume leadership role more than ever before. Huge regional disparities in these aspects need to be addressed collectively and comprehensively, Patricia said.