Award-winning R&B, Pop and Hip-Hop legend Beyoncé answers the title question quite evocatively in her single of the same name. “Girls,” is her repetitive response. And while the anthem is beguiling enough to make one want to believe it, the facts say otherwise.
Neither girls nor women run the world, and most don’t want to; they just want the equality that is rightfully theirs. But as Reuters reported on Monday, the world is way off track to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030 deadline for achieving gender equality.
The 4-day Women Deliver conference, which opened in Vancouver, Canada on Monday last, with some 8,000 delegates from over 165 countries, saw the launching of a global index, which was no doubt a disappointment to many. According to the index, to date no country in world has fully met any of the SDG targets related to women and very many of them are so far off that the likelihood of the goals being met is dubious.
Women’s unpaid work was among topics the conference addressed. This issue has long been a sticking point in the gender equality fight. What is herded under the patriarchal, blanket term ‘women’s work’ is in fact a series of often thankless tasks that includes cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, fetching water, grocery shopping, caring for children and the elderly among others. This is work that is necessary for the well-being of families, communities and society as a whole to the extent that if no one did it, chaos would ensue. This is work that is predominantly done by women and girls, even when they also work outside of the home, because in many instances, men (and women) have been socialised to believe that it is beneath men to engage in household tasks.
In some cases, too, when men undertake some of these tasks, they see themselves as helping women rather than doing their part, and often expect to be congratulated for doing so. Sadly, too many women still treat men doing work around the home like an unheard-of phenomenon and make too much of it. We have all seen the viral videos of men taking care of their children or their homes and read the embarrassingly, cloying comments beneath them posted mostly by women.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence which reveals that many battered women became victims of domestic violence because they did not perform one or the other domestic task the way their husbands or partners expected. Girls have also faced the brunt of their fathers’ (and mothers) rage for the same reason.
This form of discrimination continues to occur in spite of the fact that there has been much education and awareness targeting both sexes and despite the realisation by many women that their economic well-being as well as that of their children remains out of reach while they are tapped as general home dogsbody so to speak. In single-parent, women-headed households, they have no choice but to try to do it all, particularly where, as is often the case, poverty is the dominating factor.
The burden of care, when shouldered only by women and girls, limits their right to education, work, and rest and it perpetuates the cycle of poverty. Multiple international agencies have monetised women’s unpaid work to show just how much women and the world at large are losing by the perpetuation of this global disproportionate divide. Back in 1995, the United Nations Development Programme had monetised global women’s unpaid work as amounting US$3 trillion per annum.
In some countries, Guyana included, there are government programmes aimed at empowering women in which homemakers are targeted with skill training and then given small loans or grants with which they can start small, mostly home-based businesses. While this does not free them from unpaid work at home, it helps them earn an income which assists with their circumstances. The women of Vilvoorden, Essequibo Coast are worth mentioning here. According to a story published in this newspaper on Monday last, some 30 women have committed themselves to meeting every Sunday afternoon to discuss how they can address burgeoning issues in their village including domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and drug abuse. They do so while busying themselves with sewing, baking and craft making and with those who are skilled teaching others. This is a community-based initiative funded by bake sales, which means the women are limited in what activities they can actually execute.
Up to the time they spoke with this newspaper, the women, who have been meeting since January, had received no funding from either the government or the private sector, though they had approached a few businesses and received “positive feedback”. This is a programme that one hopes both sectors would pay an interest in. These women could easily be sitting on their hands waiting for government or someone else to solve their problems; they chose to act and should be commended and assisted in expanding what they have already begun. Grants and other forms of unfettered aid would allow them to run their own little world and make a greater impact on their community.
