Dear Editor,
On International Women’s Day 2021, Help & Shelter warmly celebrates the resilience of Guyanese women and the tremendous achievements and contributions that they have made and continue to make on a daily basis to the development of Guyana. We know well that without the unpaid, unrecognized and undervalued but vitally essential caring work that women do at family and community level, the entire structure of Guyanese society would cease to function. That debt for wages for housework and other caring work owed to women and by extent their families continues to be ignored and Help & Shelter calls for an immediate remedy for this state of affairs.
‘Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World’ is the IWD 2021 theme. As we reflect on this we endorse UNDP’s analysis that “we have the chance to finally end the exclusion and marginalization of women and girls. But to do that, we need immediate action. Women must have the opportunity to play a full role in shaping the pivotal decisions being made right now as countries respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic”. All over the world and in Guyana we know that women are dis-appropriately found in the lowest paid jobs and service sector which made them increasingly vulnerable to loss of income during this period of the COVID 19 pandemic, thereby increasing poverty among not only female headed households but all households as incomes for many households have been reduced or lost.
Women are traditionally the ones who do most if all of the housework and other caring work such as, cooking, cleaning, washing, child care, care for sick and elderly, cleaning and sanitizing the house, while at the same time organizing and monitoring education and home schooling of children and having them gainfully occupied during more than 1 year of social isolation from the school system. COVID 19 has tripled and quadrupled the burden on women as their responsibilities at household have increased through their unpaid, undervalued and unrecognized caring work they have done. It has largely been through women’s caring work that the COVID 19 pandemic has been less devastating than it could have been on Guyanese families. Help & Shelter salutes and thanks the nurses and other health professionals who have labored long and diligently to combat the COVID 19 by attending to the sick and needy especially during the last year.”
We also recognize and call for the full and immediate implementation of the priority theme of the Commission on the Status of Women that “Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. We call for the swift implementation of equal pay, equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work and an end to all forms of violence against women.” For us, these are not just idle words or nice sounding phrases to be thrown around at opportune times. We demand that they become a reality in women’s lives NOW. The level of women’s leadership and access to effective participation and decision-making at the national level continues to be unacceptable. Women are mere spectators to important decision-making processes, women in the NGO sector were not included in any meaningful consultations on the national budget, women’s representation on state boards is under 50%, and often does not meet even the 30% requirement that Guyana has signed onto.
Since the start of the pandemic, Help & Shelter has called for women representation on the COVID Task Force so as to inform decision-makers about issues affecting women. Unfortunately these calls, even though we make up half of the population, have fallen on deaf ears across both the APNU + AFC political administration and the present PPP/C administration. This is not acceptable in 2021 and we call on the political leadership to immediately make all efforts to rectify this unequal representation and access in keeping with the theme of IWD 2021. This is not an option but an obligation under international conventions signed on to by the Government of Guyana. On the other hand, it is hard not to miss the emphasis and high profile consultations being accorded to private sector organizations on many levels. The private sector is still notoriously deficient in gender parity and women representation at leadership level. We congratulate the newly formed Women in Business organization, which is a welcome initiative and we at Help & Shelter, join with others in supporting the initiative and look forward to establishing much needed partnerships for the economic advancement of women.
The COVID pandemic has made worse both in Guyana and worldwide the inordinately high level of GBV, which according to the Women’s Health & Family Survey affects 1 out of every 2 women during their lifetime. Guyana’s high level of femicide continues unabated and, in some places, has even escalated. What the COVID pandemic has exposed is a raging pandemic of GBV and domestic violence. The lack and quality of support services for survivors and victims of violence is no longer acceptable and all efforts must be made to strengthen and improve them. Help & Shelter has long called for low cost housing for survivors of violence needing to leave abusive relationships and to live lives free from violence and the threat to violence. The Guyana Police Force response to GBV and DV continues to be problematic in far too many areas, including non-response to reported incidents of imminent or actual DV attacks on women; failure to arrest offenders; corruption and inappropriate relations in the course of their duties, and perpetration of DV and sexual offences while in or out of uniform. The perceived inaccessibility of the top leadership of the police force to members of the public, including NGOs, needs to be addressed. We at the same time recognize and salute the many police officers who are efficient and hard working in the exercise of their duties as the upholders of the law and who have offered protection and service to, not only Help & Shelter, but to many citizens.
We welcome and note the launching of the national 914 emergency service but most NGOs have not been consulted or had discussions on how this national hotline will integrate with their services. Surely for this to be effective, there must be partnerships across all state and non-state agencies. NGOs such as Help & Shelter have established hotline services and have been working tirelessly on the prevention, protection and response to GBV and DV for many years. As a country and as a people we have to find ways of building trust, synergies, partnerships and collaborations. It is no longer acceptable for State agencies to ignore and minimize the work and expertise of the NGO sector. Neither is it effective to divide and favour some organizations over others. This is not a pathway to success at any level. Finally, all Guyanese must be appalled at the dreadful behavior of our parliamentarians. To make matters worse the most recent incident, namely the alleged assault of a female MP by a male MP has further degraded Guyana’s parliament, the highest forum of the citizens of Guyana. How can a country heal if the leaders are seemingly incapable of working together? We call on the leadership of all political parties to set a better standard for respectful non-discriminatory civil conduct as parliamentarians. We call on all the women parliamentarians to take the lead in finding a way to resolve this unacceptable situation.
We also call on the Government to resolve the situation of the nurses in Linden. Sexual discrimination and harassment is not acceptable anywhere, anytime and must be stamped out. We call on the health and political women’s leadership to find a way to resolve this problem in keeping with the dignity and non-discrimination of women based on their gender. We end by acknowledging and supporting the many initiatives taken by the present government towards the empowerment and upliftment of women, communities and families and for the continued support for Help & Shelter services. As always we stand ready to work with all for the advancement of Guyanese women, children and society.
Yours faithfully,
Danuta Radzik
Colin Marks
Linda Hustler-Gray
Pamela Nauth
Josephine Whitehead
For Help & Shelter
