Greene points to ‘social alienation of men
A Caricom Secretariat official is advocating for education on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) to be included in the school curriculum and for gender issues to become a priority on the regional agenda.
At the Fifth Meeting of the Bureau of Women’s/Gender Affairs, Caricom Director of Human and Social Development Myrna Bernard told gender directors and coordinators that they should consider introducing GBV in the Health and Family Life Education curriculum, a curriculum which was intended to address violence in schools. She said that a gender perspective should be integrated into the curriculum as part of a broader approach to addressing life skills.
Bernard also acknowledged that the issue of whether teachers are prepared to deliver such a curriculum would need to be addressed and suggested that the Bureau targets administrators and policy-makers as well.
The director’s comments were made against the background of findings from a recent Study on Gender Differentials at the Secondary and Tertiary Level of the Educational System in the Anglophone Caribbean. The study, conducted in three phases by UWI Professor Barbara Bailey revealed, among other things, widespread abuses by both teachers and students in Caribbean schools.
Sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women the Bureau addressed several important cross-cutting issues. One of the issues covered was developing strategies and action plans to sensitise the region on reducing the scourge of violence. The meeting also discussed an update on the gender based violence project funded under the Caricom/Spain Cooperation Agreement. The project seeks to develop a more coordinated and integrated approach to reducing GBV in the Caribbean Community.
Social alienation of men
In his address, Caricom Assistant Secretary-General Dr Edward Greene said although gender inequality “has long been with us” it is likely to be intensified by the global economic crisis. Pointing to the 2009 International Labour Organ-isation Global Employment Trends for Women Report Greene noted the global financial crisis would place new hurdles in the path toward sustainable and socially equitable growth making ‘decent work’ for women increasingly more difficult. The resultant impacts he said, would be an increase in domestic violence, illicit drug trafficking by women and prostitution among women.
He argued that gender relations should not be seen I the context of women’s issues only.
In this context he called on the bureau to pay special attention to the social alienation of males which he contended often translated into violence against women and other afflictions.
Greene said the Community must respond urgently by making gender issues priority on the regional agenda. He said this would mean underscoring the importance and the value of championing the cause of women thereby protecting poor and vulnerable groups. He also recommended implementing several immediate and long-term measures such as school feeding programmes, employment guarantee schemes, micro-financing and other targeted social protection measures.
Additionally, he said it has become necessary for member states to engage in effective monitoring of social spending and for tracking expenditures to ensure that the needs of women and other vulnerable groups are being addressed during the current economic crisis. Greene also encouraged gender coordinators and directors to advocate for a more robust system of data collection and to use data disaggregated by sex to assess the differential impacts of the financial crisis on men and women. “We can’t afford to make mistakes because we do not have evidence based policies to address the social inequities which exist among the sexes,” Greene said.
