Govt. unveils gender policy
Belize may be changing in many ways, but on the male supremacy scale, the country is still well entrenched on the macho side of the continuum. How much longer that will be the case was an issue addressed this morning. News 5’s Marion Ali reports.
Marion Ali, Reporting
It touches on issues ranging from job opportunities to rape, and it aims to promote gender equality as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. After two years of research, National Women’s Commission President, Joan Musa today presented the National Gender Policy to Minister of Women, Dolores Balderamos Garcia.
Joan Musa, President, National Women’s Commission
“We felt that we had to look at bettering the conditions of women, but we do hear from time to time the men complaining that they are being left behind. But when we looked at the actual concept and what gender means, it’s the relationship between men and women and how different circumstances and different issues impact on them.”
But as far as the issue of education is concerned, although there are more women than men enrolled in schools, studies conducted as a part of the policy show that the females are still the marginalized group.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Min. of Human Dev., Women
“Look at the subjects that women in U.B. are studying; look at the jobs that women have in society and by and large you will still find that women have the more menial less paying, secretarial, clerical jobs.”
So how do we change this mentality of “living in a man’s world”? Garcia says by introducing the Gender Sensitising Manual to teachers in primary schools.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia
“Because if in the primary school, the women teachers, and mostly our teachers in primary school are women as we know, but they would put the boys to go outside and to pick up the garbage in the yard, but they put the little girl to sweep inside the classroom. If you would change that from very young that would develop a more equitable society because girls would go into areas of professional education, for example, becoming a doctor or a computer specialist, but also you can see women in non-traditional areas, but it has to start from very, very small.”
And while attitudes must change from small, those who are big cannot escape the issue, especially those called upon as mediators.
Ralph Fonseca, Minister of Home Affairs
“The police have got to be specially trained to be aware and sensitive to gender issues…The fact that we’ve been training 200 police persons, specifically to be able to deal with that kind of thing, and the fact that we have gotten funding so that each police station and each unit are sensitive to this and have got people trained to deal with domestic issues.”
The Gender Policy will be used by government as a guidebook to implementing policies that aim to promote gender balance. Marion Ali for News 5.
The Commission also hopes that students, educators, and especially those involved in gender-sensitive issues will make use of the document.
